Amaranth Road Studio

Attentive Ghost

2012-01-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

First Buds. Copyright Andrea Paterson at Amaranth Road Studio. 2012

Dear Reader

Baudelaire considers you his brother, and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words.

Billy Collins

In the short poem above Billy Collins addresses the reader who acts as a constant presence in the life of a writer. Collins suggests that a writer cannot function without feeling the presence of a reader in the shadows. The relationship between writer and reader is essential to the art of writing--there must be an audience, however amorphous or intangible. The reader bears silent witness to the writer’s craft, always acting as impetus to write and shaping the writer’s words by stimulating the imagination, forcing the writer to conjure up a particular sort of reader that they would like to engage with their work.

The reader standing in the doorway, casting their own shadow, alters what is perceptible in the work of the writer. The shadow cast over the words is unique to the reader and as such the reader integrates themselves into the production of written art. Meaning is produced through the interplay of dual presences--the writer and the reader together decide upon the final form of the work.

I have been thinking about the writer/reader dyad in relation to the way my own life is changing. For the past nine months there has been a strong presence at the corner of my world. This child within me, almost ready to be born, has already begun to shape my actions, my thoughts, my words because suddenly I am aware that I am never alone. Someone else, someone currently unknown and mysterious, lurks just out of reach, casting tantalizing shadows over the familiar edges of my life, transforming them into new shapes entirely. I cast this baby as a reader of my own existence, a being summoned up from nothing, yet profoundly affecting the unfolding narrative of my life. If I thought I was writing only for myself, that can never be the case again. This attentive ghost, who has been listening to the sound of my heartbeat and the rush of blood through my veins, wields extraordinary power to alter my perception completely. Anything I write in my life’s work now will be written with this child in mind.

And this tiny creature will come to be a writer in their own time, and perhaps I will be one of many readers in their life, quietly encouraging their own story to unfold. And as we read the wavering lines of our mutual existence, as the story bends around each of our bodies--flowing water around rocks in a narrative stream--we will compose a collaborative work. Two lives become three and the shadow currently standing in the doorway will take on an existence in flesh, punctuating our sentences with long vowels and the shrieks that precede language. We will see ourselves anew as we listen to this ancient voice singing the first song ever written. My awe stems not from the helplessness of my coming child but from knowledge of their extraordinary power. I am about to travel to the edges of pain, to the very limit of my own strength, and I will bring back a creature of myth--something magical, elemental, water-born. And when that first cry pierces the darkness my entire vocabulary will be changed forever and the trajectory of my story permanently altered to fit the curled form of a ghost brought to life, a witness summoned from beyond this world to reshape every notion I ever had about what it means to love.

Hugging Bears

2012-01-16T11:45:00.000-08:00

Another project that was given away as a gift--needle felted hugging bears! I found this pattern in a bizarre craft book that was sent to me from a family member in Australia. Pass Me a Smile by Toyoko Sugiwaka is full of truly unusual felt and fabric projects including a one eyed cat tea cozy inspired by the author's beloved pet. The book is worth taking a look at if you can get access to it.

Note that this bear pattern is not my own but was copied from Sugiwaka's book. I'll be posting some new needle felting of my own design shortly as I'm in the process of working on a family of small birds.

Orkney Hat

2012-01-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

When I travelled to Orkney last October I was determined to bring back something that was strongly tied to the land there. My mind immediately hoped for yarn--something aran weight, something deeply Scottish and reflective of remote island life. Imagine my joy when, after stepping off the tiny plane from the Scottish mainland, I found a display case in the airport containing skeins of locally produced yarn. I may have done a small dance of joy while M. looked at me like I'd lost my mind. I wrote down the address of the yarn shop and convinced M. to take a drive out there on a blustery afternoon.

Upon arrival I was able to speak with the shop owner who was passionate about local production and lamented the loss of local woolen mills. While Orkney still breeds a number of hardy, local sheep it's very difficult to have the yarn spun without shipping it to China. Chinese mills are taking over because they're cheaper than the local heritage mills. The owner of the Benlaw Woolshed has the fleece from her local sheep spun at one of the only heritage mills left in the UK, and located in Orkney. Her process is completely organic. Her sheep are well adapted to the harsh local conditions and produce a thick and warm fleece. The resulting yarn is rustic--it doesn't have the next-to-skin-softness of the merino and alpaca that is in such high demand in today's yarn market, but it does have the virtues of being durable and completely natural. The yarn came in only three undyed colours--oatmeal, light brown, and dark chocolate. I bought a skein of each and took home a pattern for an aran hat.

I finished the hat before the holidays and decided to give it away as part of a gift exchange. Here is the result--a labour of love from sheep to mill to finished product brought to you all the way from the Orkney Islands. I hope to make more hats with the remaining yarn as I definitely want one of these for myself!

Orkney Hat. Amaranth Road Studio. 2011

Phone Fail

2011-12-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

This will be a post in which I publicly out myself for doing something so astoundingly stupid I have to wonder if I'm fit for life in general. I would keep this humiliating fail to myself, but frankly it's just too funny and I only ask that others share their idiocy if similar things happen to them in the future.

I was at home alone and needed to call my husband to ask him a question before he left work. So I pick up my cell phone, dial his cell phone, and listen as it starts ringing. Then I hear a ringing in my own apartment and I say to myself "Hey, that's my husband's cellphone ringing. Strange that someone is calling it at the same time I am!" And then, yes it's true, with my own cellphone still plastered to my ear I ANSWER my husband's cellphone. But I didn't get to it in time and the cellphone says "missed call." And all of this would be embarrassing enough except that I STILL didn't clue in and I think to myself "darn, didn't get there fast enough. I wonder who that was? It sucks that my husband doesn't have call display because now I can't tell him who called." And then I try calling him again, because the last time he didn't pick up and I'm thinking "Maybe he's driving already and can't pick up, but I'll try again." So I call AGAIN. And his cellphone, which is sitting right next to me, now rings again and it's only at that moment that I realize what a complete moron I have been and that my husband is obviously not going to pick up the phone that's busy charging on his dresser and I just managed to trick myself into answering my own phone call. I would like to publicly chalk this up to a brain disorder caused by pregnancy hormones and pretend that such a thing would never have happened under normal circumstances. If we can all agree to those terms then please go ahead and have a good laugh at my expense.

In Which I Attempt to Sew

2011-12-08T14:20:00.001-08:00

Card Holder. Amaranth Road Studio. 2011

I have a Pfaff sewing machine that I'm pretty sure came from a Nazi-era German sweatshop. The thing is a tank. It weighs a ton. It is not pretty. And I'm pretty sure it rivals cockroaches for its ability to just keep on going. I bought it from a friend who found it at a garage sale and never used it. I think I paid $50. And I've been meaning to learn to sew ever since.

Back when I first got it I made a knitting needle holder and a pair of fur pants. And those, my friends, are the only two things I've ever sewn...until now. (And if you must know I made the fur pants as part of a Satyr Halloween costume. They stayed up through use of long shoelaces and I got fur everywhere--long story). After the fur pants the machine went back into its ancient suitcase and stayed there until just a few weeks ago when I set the machine up in a place of honour on my craft desk, figuring that if it was out and ready to sew I might actually make something.

And I DID make something! I got this book out of the library called Cute Stuff by Aranzi Aronzo which, true to its name, is full of sickeningly adorable small sewing projects. It seemed simple enough, with clear patterns and instructions. The projects were useful (tote bags, zippered pouches, hair accessories, and easy appliques) yet wouldn't involve a large time or materials investment. I chose to make a felt business card holder because I had a pile of wool felt on hand.

I carefully cut out the pattern using tracing paper, carefully traced this onto the felt, and carefully cut out all the felt pieces. Then it took me about 20 minutes to wind a bobbin and get my machine up and running, but I did it without mishap. The instructions from my ancient sewing machine manual are actually quite good. And then I started sewing the pieces together and was all proud of myself until I held up the finished project and realized it looked like an 8 year old had made it. And not a very skilled 8 year old at that. The images you are looking at are not of that original attempt. Let's just say that the original attempt ended up in my garbage can covered in potato peelings. It was sent on its way with a few choice swear words, a short lament over the loss of a beautiful piece of 100% wool felt, and determination to try again.

So I cut out new pieces, and this time actually tacked them together with pins (on the advise of a friend who actually knows how to sew) and then sewed them together. This time I think I achieved something at the level of 10 year old. So definitely an improvement. My biggest mistake was using contrasting thread. I thought it would look cute. My book said it would look cute. But in reality it just worked to highlight my sometimes sloppy sewing in high contrast detail. I also didn't realize that a 1/4 inch seam allowance around the edge of my project is not very much, and this created challenges.

HOWEVER, in the end I was happy with my newby results. I'm particularly fond of the apple applique that I designed myself. I'm encouraged to keep trying on the sewing front. A few lessons have been learned and I'm sure things will be smoother next time.

Touching Pregnant Bellies

2011-12-05T09:55:00.001-08:00

I've read a lot of blog posts and articles by women who are pregnant and very upset that their bodies have suddenly entered the public domain. These articles tend to condemn random strangers, acquaintances, and even family and friends for reaching out to touch the pregnant belly without permission. This act of touching is frequently framed as an invasion of privacy and an encroachment on a woman's right to control her own body. Anger abounds about the tendency of people to see the pregnant belly as something separate from the woman herself, and therefore available for public access.

Before I got pregnant I wasn't sure how I felt about this anti-touching sentiment. It makes sense in some ways. I mean, you would probably freak out if you were on a bus, not pregnant, and some stranger started caressing your belly, or your arm, or your back or any part of your body for that matter. And yet now that I'm large enough to be immediately tagged as pregnant, and acquaintances have begun to reach out for that globe of my belly, I find that I really don't mind at all. I wonder if the anger about touching pregnant bellies stems from a certain overprotectiveness of our bodies and general mistrust of the intentions behind touching.

What I have found is that people are magnetically attracted to pregnant bellies. If you walk around pregnant you have the rare ability to elicit random smiles and kindness from strangers. People are just nicer to you and they seem to get a lift from seeing the physical evidence of a tiny life forming within you. You are suddenly the carrier of something magic, and people are attracted to that. They want desperately to touch the source of that magic, to feel the very first spark of life shifting under your skin. The urge to reach out and touch a pregnant belly is almost irresistible to many and I can watch people's hands drifting out towards me on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the mass of negative messages about touching pregnant bellies has caused people who are genuinely full of love, good intentions, and happiness to become nervous and self-conscious about their desire to touch you. I watch them fight their desire to rub my belly and withdraw their hands saying "I'm sure it's annoying to have people grabbing your belly, so I won't touch you." Or they'll stare longingly but keep their hands firmly to themselves.

I really think this is a shame. I find that when people reach out with such pure joy to touch my growing baby it feels like a blessing. Here are people I barely know freely sharing good-will and well-wishes through gently laying their hands upon me and sending forth kind thoughts. How often do we experience such free-flowing love in a world where most of us try our very best to ignore the other humans around us? This laying of hands seems primal, spiritual, completely natural. It's what people are drawn to do and it makes them feel good to touch a forming life. And it makes me feel good to see the world welcoming this unborn child in such a gentle way--reaching out and telling this baby "the world is a place full of love and caring, and we're all happy that you're on your way."

So I would argue that those who touch your pregnant belly are not doing so because they are ignorant of your rights to your own body. They are not trying to invade your personal space or forcibly take something private from you. They are really just expressing an instinctual and irrepressible love for you and your unborn child. Try thinking of this action as a beautiful, completely secular prayer for the life you are creating, and you may find yourself more kindly disposed to the woman in the grocery store who drops her loaf of bread just for the chance to touch you.

What do you think? I welcome further discussion on this topic as I can certainly see merit to the other side of this argument.

Book Review: Who Wants to Be a Poodle

2011-12-02T15:36:00.001-08:00

Who Wants to Be a Poodle I Don't by Lauren Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book for my currently unborn child, but read it to them aloud anyway. Frankly I bought this book because it was on sale at a nearby bookstore and when I flipped through I was taken in by the excellent writing, great pictures, and engaging story. This is about a pampered poodle who wants to shed her unfulfilling life of superficial luxury to become a "daring, dangerous, dog". While her owner is into spa treatments and psychics, this poodle wants to jump in puddles and go outside when it's raining. So let's be honest, I bought this book for me. A great story with a solid message--I may read this one aloud a few more times before the baby's born.

View all my reviews

Lucky Dog

2011-11-30T11:39:00.001-08:00

Lucky Dog. By Amaranth Road Studio. November 2011.

My most recent needle felting project is a commission for a friend who said she wanted a puppy and gave me free reign beyond that. I'm very happy with the results and I present Lucky the Dog!

Lucky is 4 inches high and made of Corriedale wool roving. He is very firmly felted with glass eyes and metal button jointed arms. His legs are not jointed so as to provide a firm base for standing. The project took about 8 hours to complete.

Knits for My Baby

2011-11-29T10:47:00.001-08:00

Geometric Baby Blanket. Pattern from Knitty.com. Amaranth Road Studio. 2011

Knitting for my baby is meditation for their future. I conjure a world that is warm and soft as merino yarn flies through my fingers, creating a web of garter stitch and deep intention. This Geometric Baby Blanket took me four months to knit. A flash in knitting time where projects have a tendency to stretch out for years. But with the baby due in early February time is short if I want to greet my newborn with gifts of wooly clothing.

The pattern for this blanket was designed with a baby's visual development in mind. The starkly contrasting colours begin as a bit of a blur, but the baby eventually learns to distinguish between them. I just liked the optical illusion of a swirling, hypnotic tunnel. It's not your typical lacy baby blanket, and I found that appealing.

In addition to the blanket I managed to whip off a baby hat in a single day during a trip to a family cabin. Spud and Chloe's Apple Hat (size 0-6 months) was an amazingly quick and fun project. The yarn colours are awesome and I love the wool/cotton blend of Spud and Chloe Sweater yarn. I have enough left over to make another hat so I may need to find another baby requiring an apple hat. I also maintain that apple hats are complete gender neutral!

This will probably not be the end of the baby knitting. The projects are so small and irresistible that I expect I'll become addicted.

Green Apple Hat. Pattern by Spud and Chloe. Amaranth Road Studio. 2011

Featured Art: Frost Tree

2011-11-14T09:54:00.001-08:00

Frost Tree, originally uploaded by kayla coo.

I wore my winter coat this morning. There's no doubt that winter is descending on the west coast. The recent time change brought the darkness and now we're getting the wind, the rain, and the cold. We're supposed to have a particularly chilly winter which I hope will mean more sun than usual. Today we're having an uncharacteristically bright day for mid-November in Vancouver.

With winter on my mind I wanted to showcase this beautiful piece of needle felting and embroidery by Michala Gyetvai (www.flickr.com/photos/kaylacoo). I love this winter landscape for its marriage of opposites--the warmth of wool and cozy embroidery juxtaposed against the twinkling frostiness of the scene. It certainly reminds me of how beautiful winter can be even in its desolation.

Rupert Bear

2011-10-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

Rupert is about 4.5 inches tall, firmly needle felted, with embroidered features, glass eyes, and button jointed arms and legs. Glass eyes are a bit hard to source so I ended up ordering from a company in Britain. I'm super happy with them, but probably should have ordered some larger sizes as well (I got 3-5 mm eyes but I think I could have gone up to as much as 10 mm for the size projects I tend to work on). This was my first attempt at button joints as well. Unfortunately I didn't have 4 of the same buttons so Rupert is a little mismatched in that respect. Otherwise I'm quite happy with the mixed elements of this project. I found a great tip on making button joints--sew the arms and legs to the body first and then sew the buttons on. If you attach the limbs through the buttons only it's hard to make the joints tight enough. I used upholstery thread for the joints, which is much stronger than regular embroidery thread and prettier than the fishing line I've used in the past. Rupert's arms and legs are posable and should stay that way even if the joints loosen up a bit over time. I'm still working on getting a really smooth finish to my needle felting projects. I'm in the process of experimenting with a number of types of wool and will report on how that goes. I recently finished my first sculptural wet felting project and will post pictures and frustrations about that soon!

Adventures in Quince

2011-10-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

I didn't know what a quince was until just this week. I had heard the word. I knew that it was a fruit of some kind, but I had never actually seen one until a friend with an overabundance offered to share her fall harvest. This friend had already made quince jam, quince jelly, and quince butter and seemed eager to offload some of her fruit. I imagine she was starting to feel suffocated by quince and I certainly couldn't say no to free, local, organic produce, so I agreed to take a bag. What I received was a few pounds of yellow fruit that looked much like pears with a strange downy fuzz on them and an intense, sweet aroma somewhere between pears and apples. For all who have never seen one, this is what a quince looks like:

Quince. Amaranth Road Studio. 2011.

The quince inundated friend was also kind enough to point me to a good quince jam recipe, so I went home with my bounty and got to work.

Quince are related to apples and pears and generally grow in warm-temperate climates. They are basically inedible raw due to being very hard and sour, but since they are extremely high in pectin they make excellent jams and jellies with the addition of a fair amount of sugar. My quince jam recipe was simple--just grated quince, lemon juice, lemon zest (I actually zested a grapefruit because I didn't have a lemon), and sugar. When the quince flesh is cooked it turns from a light yellow to a bright pink/salmon colour, which looks beautiful when canned in glass jars--almost too pretty to eat in fact!

Quince Jam. Amaranth Road Studio. 2011

Quince have a grainy texture similar to pears but a stronger flavour. The pectin content was definitely high enough to jell the jam without any added pectin so I was grateful that my friend warned me not to do so. Overall a great success in processing Vancouver's local bounty. A huge thank you to the friend who offloaded her quince and sent me off on a culinary adventure.

Quince Jam. Amaranth Road Studio. 2011.

Crazy Pumpkin

2011-10-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

New needle felting for fall. This startled pumpkin is made of Corriedale wool roving with hand painted polymer clay eyes. He's on sale through my Etsy shop. I used my soft-box again to photograph this project. The longer exposure time definitely helped to blow out the background while still maintaining a lot of detail in the felt. A slight correction in Photoshop got me to an almost complete white, but there are still a few orange reflections off the pumpkin.

Sapphire Sweater

2011-10-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

Sapphire Sweater. Amaranth Road Studio 2011. Click image for more photos.

When my husband proposed in 2009 he gave me a sapphire ring. In return I wanted to knit him a sapphire sweater. It's a little odd really that women get gorgeous jewelry upon their engagements and men are not supposed to expect any symbolic offering of love in return.

Knitting a sweater is a commitment. Knitting a sweater means investing in supplies and investing much more in terms of time. I have recently discovered that knitting a sweater for a man means an even bigger time commitment than usual, simply because you need to knit a larger garment! So with that deep blue ring on my finger I picked out blue cotton yarn (my husband can't stand the itch factor of wool). When that yarn arrived I wrapped it up, gave it to him for his birthday, and promised an engagement sweater within a year.

The year came and went. I wasn't done. I wasn't even close to done. A the end of the first year I think I had only the front of the sweater complete and I only had myself to blame. I was slacking off, big time. I can forgive myself to some extent. After all, I was engaged and planning a wedding and generally busy. But if I'm honest there's no real excuse. The pattern was simple. I was knitting the Cotton Classic sweater from Never Knit Your Man a Sweater Until You have the Ring. It's basic stockinette stitch with only minor shaping and detailing. The gauge was average. I just didn't knit often enough.

The second year of sweater knitting began to slip away as well. At least I can say that I was faithful. I didn't take up any other knitting projects in the interim. I was dedicated to finishing the engagement sweater before taking on any other projects and I did make some progress. Then I got pregnant. And that lit the fire because I wanted to knit baby blankets and baby hats and baby shoes. But I was not going to let myself launch into baby projects without first completing the sweater that symbolized my love for the man I had married (a year ago!). So I got to work and when I actually put in some effort daily the sweater was finished quickly.

My husband actually wears this sweater. And not only for special occasions, or when he thinks I'll notice. He wears it to work. He wears it at least once a week. And there is nothing more lovely to behold for a knitter than the person they love completely wearing something that they made and actually enjoying it. The sweater fits perfectly, though there was some terror about sleeve length for awhile there and I think it will be a pretty durable piece of clothing. So finally, I have the ring my husband has the sweater and our baby-on-the-way has a navy blue and white striped blanket coming their way so that we can all be warm and cozy and loved.

The Pragmatic Artist

2011-10-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

I have recently discovered a blog by Anna Lidstone that I think will be of interest to a lot of my friends and family. She writes a blog called The Pragmatic Artist and states that:

The Pragmatic Artist celebrates what I call "creativity for grown ups"– the challenges of living as a creative person in the "real world," how to find "art/life balance," what it means to be a "pragmatic artist," and why - when there are dishes to be done and bills to be paid - it all still matters.

Great links, great quotations, and lots of wisdom about wrapping creativity into the mechanisms of your daily life. It's worth checking out. It may also dispel some guilt if you're like me and concerned about all the time you spend making cute animals out of wool. It might be that those cute, fuzzy animals are important in ways you never imagined.

Check out Anna's blog at http://annalidstone.tumblr.com/

Giving Thanks

2011-10-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

Rosehips and Peppers. Amaranth Road Studio. October 2011

This year Thanksgiving happened at my place. With no chance of going home to Ontario for the harvest holiday and with my mother-in-law out of town it became clear that if I wanted a celebration it was going to have to be one of my own making. I looked at this as an opportunity to develop new traditions. With our baby shifting restlessly within me I set out to prepare a meal that would mean something--that would reference Thanksgivings past and create something new in honour of my emerging family.

On my mother’s side of the family Thanksgiving is all about the food. Food is the medium through which we unify ourselves and show our deep appreciation for all the love shared between us. So when I began to plan my own Thanksgiving, food was at its core. A tricky thing indeed since I had to avoid eggs, dairy, and gluten! This is where the newness shone through. I was determined to make all my old favourites in allergy free versions. I leaned heavily on the magazine Living Without. The fall edition included a fabulous collection of Thanksgiving feast recipes. I eventually settled on the following menu:

Turkey. You just can’t have Thanksgiving without turkey. I know that some modern types eschew turkey for more exotic things--ham, lamb, maybe even something concocted out of tofu, but in my book turkey is key. It’s the armature upon which the rest of Thanksgiving dinner is built up. I got a frozen 15 pound turkey on sale from Safeway. I spent over a week worrying about it. I worried that it wouldn’t defrost on time. I imagined myself having to pull Dave-esque tricks, like going at the thing with a hair dryer. I worried that it wouldn’t cook properly, that it would be either raw like the fateful Christmas turkey at Grandma’s many years ago or dried out in the fashion of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. To this end I purchased two extra thermometers on top of the two I already owned. In the end I had two oven thermometers to make sure my oven was actually registering 350 degrees, one meat thermometer to leave in the turkey throughout its roasting time, and one instant read thermometer to corroborate the readings of the other one. I wasn’t leaving this to chance and believed that temperature science could help me. It seems to have worked. I was able to note that my turkey was cooking faster than anticipated, respond by turning down the oven temperature, and end up with a perfectly moist but completely cooked turkey at just about the correct time! Insanity paid off this time.

Stuffing: Stuffing is essential. This stuffing needs to be made of bread. While sausage stuffing can be tasty, nothing beats the soft comfort of a bread stuffing slathered in gravy. I used the recipe from Living Without that involved gluten free bread, sausage, and pear. I made it in a pan the day before to save time and my husband gave it rave reviews.

Pumpkin Pie and Coconut Whipped Cream: This terrified me more than anything. I had a recipe from the Allergy Free Baker’s Handbook that would involve making the crust and filling from scratch. I baked feverishly keeping a close eye on my crust so that it wouldn’t burn. I had a gelatin scare at one point. I wasn’t sure if “one packet” was a standard measurement. When my pie still wasn’t firm hours later I was scared that I had used too little. Miraculously it was gelled the next day and I was able to breath a sigh of relief. I highly recommend the Allergy Free Baker’s Handbook for anyone struggling with any of the seven major allergens.

Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts: I simply roasted these with some sea salt and turkey drippings. Simple!

Gravy: I used Living Without again and made the pear and rum turkey gravy and it was amazing.

The three family guests brought salad and appetizers to round out our meal and so we gathered for the feast. My apartment smelled like a holiday. I set my table with great care. I bought flowers. I set out a selection of harvest themed needle felting projects. I really believe in these details. Life is so short on ritual these days. I think that we overlook the importance of holidays and family events. These days are glue. They are the ceremonies that cement us together as family units, even as they come with inevitable mishaps and perhaps even disasters. I wanted my first Thanksgiving to say something. I wanted it to speak a language of culinary love. Food isn’t just for the body, it’s for the mind and the soul. Through food we nourish ourselves and those we feed on a physical and emotional level. Or at least it is so in my idealistic literary world where everything has a meaning beyond the literal. My husband might disagree. Perhaps to him a pie is just a pie. To me it is a manifestation of my desire to care for those I love. My worry over gelatin is a worry about my ability to provide something perfect, something worthy of the people gathering around my table to share the fall’s bounty.As we sat at the table I felt warm. I felt a sense of deep accomplishment. Unfortunately it’s not really socially acceptable to rave about your own creations. You can’t very well dig into your own piece of pie and say “Man! This pie is poetry. This pie is a labour of love. This pie tastes like sweet brown sugary, cinnamon and ginger infused success.” So I enjoyed my meal quietly, enjoyed the assembled company, enjoyed the strange sensation of being poised on the brink of motherhood, transitioning from being the child to being the parent, from the one served to the one who serves, from the one nourished to the one with the unique privilege of nourishing and watching the well fed glow of contentedness spread around the table.


Table Setting. Amaranth Road Studio. October 2011

Manly Yogurt: Does Food Have Gender?

2011-10-06T12:23:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cookinghow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookinghow/

Did you know that yogurt is a “girly” food? Neither did I. But after reading a few articles about a new yogurt product marketed directly to men I have discovered that this common pro-biotic food is enmeshed in an ideological system about what makes a “real” man. You can read more in the Globe and Mail.

I have learned that real men don’t eat yogurt. According to Fonterra’s marketing of their new yogurt for men, yogurt is a “sissy” food that your wife eats. Apparently the regular containers of yogurt that you find in your local grocery store are wimpy foods that could hardly sustain the intense appetite of a man. Fonterra’s yogurt, marketed under the brand name Mammoth Supply Co., contains “manly” ingredients like seed and barley and is advertised as “super thick”. Let’s be clear--it isn’t that runny, fat free stuff that your lacklustre and anemic wife would consume. And it comes in containers twice the size of a normal single serving of yogurt.

I find this entire phenomenon strange. Yogurt is a healthy, nourishing food that already comes in a range of types, from thick Greek style yogurt with 10% milk fat to low fat plain yogurt enhanced with gelatin to fruit filled yogurts containing flax seed and luxury dessert flavours like cheese cake and lemon meringue pie. But apparently a man seen consuming any of these already existing varieties of yogurt risks being something other than a “real man,” something that falls on the more feminine end of the gender spectrum. And I have to wonder--how did we manage to feminize something as completely genderless as yogurt?

A brief historical investigation suggests that yogurt was eaten by “real men” in the past. In fact http://www.dairygoodness.ca/yogurt/the-history-of-yogurt tells me that “recorded history states that Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, and his armies lived on yogurt.” I have also learned that “most historical accounts attribute yogurt to the Neolithic peoples of Central Asia around 6000 B.C.. Herdsmen began the practice of milking their animals, and the natural enzymes in the carrying containers (animal stomachs) curdled the milk, essentially making yogurt.”

So how did we go from armies and herdsmen to yogurt being an emasculating food product only fit for upper class women who need a snack before their yoga class? Men are getting the raw end of this deal. It’s men who feel that they can’t order a salad and a glass of red wine at a restaurant without being heckled, it’s men who are pressured to consume monstrous servings of red meat and potatoes in order to prove their “manly” appetites, and it’s men who are encouraged to avoid light, healthy meals in favour of fat laden, rich ones slathered in hot sauce to prove their digestive strength. Women can get away with eating a “manly” meal such as a hamburger the size of your face, but men are less likely to get away with eating a “feminine” meal in public (say poached fish and couscous) without some form of judgment being passed. If my husband orders salad and I order steak our server is highly likely to pass us the wrong meals when it arrives at the table.

All of this is ridiculous, of course. Men--go out there and eat your pro-biotic, flax seed yogurt. Go out and consume an arugula salad. Go ahead and eat fruit salad or drink an apple martini. Have the chicken instead of the burger. Eat what nourishes you and makes you healthy without worrying about whether or not you look “manly” to your peers. Drink wine instead of beer if that’s what you’d prefer. The saying “you are what you eat” applies only in the literal sense that we are all made up of matter derived from the sustenance we put into our bodies. Food does not have a gender and you will not become more feminine by consuming strawberry shortcake as opposed to a deep fried Mars Bar. I suspect that if men could get away from the foods that are stereotypically marketed to them, they might just be more healthy and consume a more varied diet. One that includes yogurt.

What do you think?

Blackberry Jam

2011-09-29T12:04:00.001-07:00

Jam collage, originally uploaded by Amaranth Road Studio.

Last weekend I made a batch of jam from blackberries picked in Sechelt. We are blessed on the West Coast to have an abundance of blackberries and if you're willing to brave the bears in more remote areas the crop is almost endless in late summer. The jam experiment was a huge success as was the photography experiment. I used my homemade soft box again and this time increased the exposure to almost a full second. This created a much more even white background. I still had to do some slight colour corrections in Photoshop for the yellowish cast created by my desk lamp light, but no other post-processing was necessary.

As for the jam, I recommend using pectin that will activate without the addition of much sugar. I have recently discovered that there are a few different types of pectin--those that require sugar in huge quantities to jell and those that don't. I used Pomona's Universal Pectin (http://www.pomonapectin.com) which uses calcium water to activate rather than sugar. Because of this I was able to add only 2 cups of sugar to 8 cups of fruit rather than the 14 (!!) cups called for in my Bernardin blackberry jam recipe. I certainly don't want my jam to have more sugar than fruit in it, particularly considering how sweet and ripe the fresh-picked blackberries were. The addition of a bit of lemon juice keeps the acidity up for canning purposes. The pectin worked extremely well--in fact I probably could have used a bit less. It jelled beautifully and I now have 9 jars of low-sugar, completely organic blackberry jam to carry me through the berry-less winter.

Toby

2011-09-28T11:43:00.000-07:00


Toby. By Andrea Paterson. Amaranth Road Studio. www.flickr.com/photos/amaranthroad

I finished Toby this past weekend. He is 100% Corriedale wool, needle felted, with bead eyes. He stands about 2 inches tall and 3.5 inches long. Yesterday I constructed a DIY macro photography studio out of a cardboard box, translucent tracing paper, and a desk lamp. There are lots of tutorials online. I used the light box to do the photo shoot on this needle felting project. While somewhat successful it still needs work. My light source was too yellow, which meant a bunch of tweaks in post processing. The light also wasn't as even as I had expected. It could be that I need multiple light sources to achieve completely even lighting. In any event, it was far better than the results I would have got in my dark basement apartment with my small on camera flash. There are a few more photos of this project on Flickr.

Photo Saturday

2011-09-24T18:29:00.001-07:00

Lantern, originally uploaded by Amaranth Road Studio.

A quick photo post from a recent trip to Sechelt. More on Flickr.

Secret Sea

2011-09-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I got to look inside, deep below the stretching skin, to see the life swimming there. I might as well have traveled to space and discovered an alien planet instead of the egg shaped space of my own womb. There is an entire universe there, with one ruler at its center commanding the waves. With the sonographer as our guide my husband and I were taken on a bizarre corporeal safari with each landmark emerging from the murky water, like some new translucent species caught in the flashlight of a deep sea diver.

"There" said our guide, voice hushed as one approaching a shy animal, "there is the heart, there is a femur, there the spine, the smooth surface of the back, a mouth, kicking feet, hands already grasping." We stared in amazement for it still seems impossible that a whole person is contained within me. For the next four and a half months two souls reside in this single body and if there is a miracle in play that must be it. The light of the ultrasound skimmed the body of our baby revealing more than we will ever see again: nose, skull, ribs, toes, eyes that looked like dark pools that held a wealth of mysteries.

This creature is not quite human, I thought, as my baby flipped itself from back to belly as smoothly as a dolphin. This is something of the sea--a recapitulation of our emergence from ancient waters, not quite fish, not quite mammal. I tried to recognize this baby, tried to see something of myself in its spinning form, but I couldn't. This baby is as strange and unknowable as any alien being might be. It has its own language and its own world within my body. How mind-bending to think that something inside my own belly is so completely inaccessible to my imagination. I can never know what it is like to float in that secret sea. Memory does not allow us to travel back so far and we begin our lives in a realm of dreams.

We were given six pictures to take home: grainy images of our very own Loch Ness Monster. The image above is our baby's feet. The one on the left angled in towards the one on the right, with visible toes, just like those photos of newborn feet that every photographer takes to show smallness and perfection. And so we wait, photos in hand, for this baby to arrive from its distant planet and join us on the earth. The portal is closed and the next time we see this little one will be the day of its birth when it assumes human form and finally breathes the air.

The Wolf-Mother

2011-09-09T11:26:00.001-07:00

Wolf Running Free, originally uploaded by Dan Newcomb Photography.

I maintain a recurring interest in wolves. They have this tendency to slink out of the forests of my subconscious mind and assert themselves as metaphors and aspects of personal myth. They represent one of the last elemental forces of wildness in the North American landscape, showing up in literature from Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf to Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves. They walk the liminal spaces between tenacious family bonds and the brutality of natural predators. As such they seem to contradict themselves, exhibiting love and violence in equal measure, domesticity and wildness in the same moment.

I have recently taken to wearing a hand-crafted pendant painted with the image of a howling wolf that I bought the summer I spent in Northern Ontario working for the Ministry of Natural Resources. I wore it constantly that summer when my world consisted of pine forests, long voyages by canoe, and quests to see the Aurora Borealis. Somehow, though I never saw one, wolves felt close that summer as my own wild nature, usually hidden, trekked abandoned portages and drank loon calls like a heady wine. I put the clay pendant away when I returned to the city and it lost its relevance amidst the routine of my urban life. Ten years later I thought of it, buried in a box of knick-knacks and forgotten treasures. A distant internal howling made me seek it out, knowing that the image had once again become relevant.

I found out I was pregnant back in June and have since discovered that there is no state more purely animal. From weeks five to fifteen all vestiges of my human intellect were lost to constant “morning sickness” that would assault me at any moment of the day and was certainly not contained to the morning. I began existing in a deeply physical world where my only concerns were satisfying the two contrary needs of my body--the need to eat and drink and the need to purge everything that had been consumed. I lay in the cave-like darkness of my basement apartment and growled while wave after wave of nausea banished every human thought from my mind. My husband brought me fruit cups like sacred offerings and every day I would slowly use up all the spoons in the house while subsisting on peaches in syrup and apple sauce.

The She-Wolf emerged then and took over control of my body. Severe dehydration eventually landed me in the hospital emergency room where I was pumped full of two liters of I.V. fluid. I lay on the stark white table and stared at the ceiling. I felt my wolf tail swish and my wolf body thrash and cry in a desperate state of hunger, thirst, and unrelenting sickness. I whimpered, I moaned, and gave in to my Wolf mind that thought only of survival for me and the child that lay silent in the ocean of my womb.

By week fifteen the sickness was lifting. I started to read again, to stretch my legs, go for walks, and eat a wider variety of foods. The Wolf-Mother retreated to the edges of my mind’s forest and my analytical mind began to reassert itself. I thought about writing and had a number of false starts as I struggled to describe the first trimester of this pregnancy. I can still feel wolf eyes watching me, taking in my every move and waiting for the moment when a totem will be needed once again.

As wearing and challenging as the past four months have been now, 18 weeks along this road, there is comfort in knowing that an animal self is there, ready to take over when the need is great. I will call on the Wolf-Mother again in the near future when I come to the moment of birth. In labour my human mind will do me no good. The tendency to inspect and judge my body’s experiences will only interfere with the fine tuned process of birthing my baby. The Wolf-Mother knows how to birth instinctively and I must trust myself to her care if I hope to pass through this greatest of trials with a sense of accomplishment and power. And so I have been wearing the wolf pendant almost every day, to remind myself of the wild and primeval state that swirls underneath the surface of social decorum and mental gymnastics that we humans don to hide the fact that we are animals. As this pregnancy progresses my mind becomes increasingly mired in fog, like the misty northern mornings of a decade ago when I woke to a world that looked like mythical Avalon. It will become harder to hold on to what is deemed human and easier to tip my head back and howl at the moon as it pulls on the tide of my womb and speaks to the tiny creature swimming there, engrossed in the elemental process of becoming.

Guest Blogging

2011-06-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

I'm guest blogging for the first time! You can find me over at The Photography of Ashely E. writing about marriage and scary driving situations. Check out her blog while you're there--she's a wonderful polaroid and film photographer:

http://aerussell.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/wedding-week-guest-andrea-paterson/

You can also find me this week at Life as a Human discussing my fear that we are losing human contact in this age of communications technology:

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/feature/the-art-of-acknowledgement/

Drywall Apocalypse

2011-05-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

As many people are already aware (I know this because Facebook is saturated with references) the Rapture and is scheduled to begin on May 21st, culminating in the end of the world some time in October. Billboards all over Canada have been erected to notify the sinners of our impending doom and give us some advance notice so we can try to save ourselves. And while I can’t bring myself to believe that the end is truly nigh, I have to admit that the edges of my world are crumbling just a little and I can’t help but feel apocalyptic vibrations.

It started with spontaneous vision loss in my left eye. I woke up one morning last month and felt as if a shard of glass was lodged under my eyelid. A week of medical appointments followed during which no doctors, naturopaths, or ophthalmologists could find anything superficially wrong with my eye. It was explained away as an instance of random inflammation. I don’t buy it though. I’m pretty certain it’s a sign of impending apocalypse: plagues of locusts, rains of fire, random blurred vision--these are all signs of the apocalypse right? As a sinner who has clearly not seen the light it makes poetic sense that my vision would be compromised in advance of the End Days. My vision did respond to steroid drops, so I can only conclude that steroids are sent by Lucifer to lull us into a false sense of complacency. With my vision intact I’m no longer thinking about my immortal soul and my metaphorical lack of sight at the level of my spirit.

But the eye incident was only the beginning. Last week I awoke to find the paint in my bathroom bulging horribly due to a build up of water coming through the ceiling and wall. A week of interventions followed, beginning with peeling off the paint so the drywall underneath wouldn’t rot and grow mold. I was able to pull the paint off in huge pieces, revealing plaster and gypsum underneath. It’s a sign of decay and degradation if I ever saw one and as the Apocalypse draws near we will all be wise to peel away our false fronts and reveal the fundamental spirits beneath. Only a few more days to set aside false idols and worship the one true god people! My bathroom has decreed that now is the time for stripping away the layers of grime, sin, corruption, and violence to find the pure (?) and essential building materials within. In the case of my bathroom (which now has two giant holes in the drywall put there by a contractor to dry out the wall underneath) this means getting to see the rusty pipes and insulation fuzz beneath the drywall facade. Clearly my bathroom is rotten to the core and I can only pray that the same is not true for me. It’s a warning, there’s no doubt. A warning just as epic as the one received by Scrooge that fateful Christmas eve--I must save my soul now or burn forever in a fiery abyss.

The plumbers seem to have stopped the leak and while my bathroom is in tatters it’s drying out. I can only conclude that the plumbers, like the steroids, were sent by Lucifer to ease my mind and make me forget about my precarious eternal soul. Without the constant reminder of damp decaying drywall I’ll hardly think about the parallel decay of my own moral fiber.

Look around I say! The signs of collapse are everywhere! From the potholes in our streets to the pine beetles destroying our forests signs of Apocalypse surround us. And yet, we have not listened! I have been too busy living my life right here on earth to think about the afterlife. I’ve been too busy trying to be a morally sound person who cares about her community, the environment, her family, and friends. I’ve been too busy thinking about how to make a difference during this lifetime to think about how to live in the afterlife. Clearly I’ve made a horrible mistake. I should have turned my eyes to heaven and ignored this earthly realm. My bathroom says the end approaches and my fate is like that of the rusted pipe leading from my toilet--to live forever consigned to a damp and decaying wall, isolated from fresh air and companionship. I just wish they could push this whole rapture back to May 23rd or something. It seems unfair to miss a long weekend. Trust god to end the world on a Saturday, just before the fun is supposed to start!

Lacuna

2011-05-12T12:23:00.000-07:00

I wrote this prose poem awhile ago and have been debating whether or not to post it. After in languished for awhile in a digital file I finally decided to send it out into the world. I hope that it will resonate with someone somewhere, and perhaps provide hope.
____________________________________________________________________________________

My body is limestone. My womb, once small, unnoticed, shifted to accommodate the first electric shock of life. A sinkhole opened in my heart and into it I poured my dreams for the future: my finger grasped by a tiny hand, the first act of naming, a miracle from blood.

When the life within me slipped away, when blood brought death, and the only cries shattering the silence of dawn were my own, when the waters of creation retreated a dark and looming space remained. My hope dissolved and rushed back to the sea on the unfeeling tide. I fell into the lacuna that the waters gouged open and went blind in the total darkness there. I lived for awhile in that echoing well, that space blanker than a pristine page and I wrote the biography that began “I love you” but was never finished.

Now my tears dissolve the word “mother” until it is meaningless and stalagmites grow from the slick stone floor in that place, dear one, where you used to live. Slowly, slowly, the emptiness takes on form, becomes a strange landscape that arises like a primordial dream. There’s a chill in the air that makes my teeth ache and the walls of this cavern grow knife edged sheets that threaten evisceration for those that dare to draw near, but there’s something beautiful too.

I wait for stirrings in the mineral rich pools deep within my body. I wait to catch a glimpse of eyeless creatures swimming: a translucent salamander that might become something greater; something that lives, and thrives, and grows into the light.

Andrea Paterson. 2011

Ukrainian Easter and More on Ethical Eating

2011-04-22T09:43:00.001-07:00

11-075 $65, originally uploaded by katyegg.

A few Life as a Human articles for you. The first is my musings on Ukrainian Easter traditions and a bit of holiday nostalgia. The second is an article written by another LAAH contributer who is responding to my article "How to Save a Cow". It's a great continuation of the ethical food discussion and worth a read.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/feature/ukrainian-easter-traditions/

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/home-living/lifestyle/how-to-save-a-tuna-and-other-thoughts-about-the-food-we-choose/

Happy Easter

2011-04-21T12:38:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter, originally uploaded by Amaranth Road Studio.

100% wool needle felted bunny. After I made the felted eggs things got a bit out of hand and I ended up with an Easter Bunny to go with them.

Don't Beat Yourself Up

2011-04-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve been getting bored with my work-outs and because I’m bored I’m getting lazy. I head over to the gym, I do a bit of cardio on the stepper or the elliptical or the treadmill but I don’t push myself too hard. I’ve been feeling like I need to challenge myself, push my body a bit harder, try something new to shake things up. So I went to a kick boxing class last Wednesday on my lunch, and perhaps got more than I bargained for.

There were three of us in the class and the instructor was a huge muscled man who looked like he could crush me with only the downward force of his eyelid. He taught us some basic punching moves, some basic kicking moves and then had us attack our invisible opponents. The air and I had quite the sparring match. Maybe I needed to blow off some steam, I don’t know, but I found myself really getting into it. Some animal part of me became unhinged and I punched the air with everything I had, I gritted my teeth, formed my hands into tight fists, and cut loose. I was panting, sweating, feeling the muscles in my arms and shoulders protest, but I kept hitting. I was, at one moment, described by the instructor as “small but vicious.”

I think in the end the air won. Who knew that punching and kicking air could be so dreadfully hard on the body? I’ve been broken for a week. I woke up the next day feeling like I’d been mauled by a bear. Putting on my shirt was painful because raising my arms above my head used my punching muscles and they weren’t in the least bit happy about it. And yet, after the class I had felt the endorphin rush. I felt energized, maybe a little crazed, but lighter. I felt like I had let go of some huge tension, some heavy albatross, some hoarded anxiety. So even though I was STILL sore a week later I went back to the kick boxing class.

Things were different this time. This time we weren’t just punching the air. This time we were instructed to kick our classmates who would hold up blockers so as not to take the full brunt of the violence. I wasn’t so sure about that. Kicking the air was one thing, but I wasn’t too keen on kicking the middle aged man that I was teamed up with. And it seemed he wasn’t too keen on kicking me. While the instructor paired up with a guy in the class who seemed to have more kick boxing experience and they wailed on each with furious abandon my partner hit me with kicks immediately followed by “sorry” “sorry” “sorry”. I kicked him back and tried to avoid missing the blocker and actually kicking him in the face. Eventually I was told to switch partners and my new opponent was instructed to “really” kick me. “She has to learn to take a hit” said the instructor. “Hit a little harder!” So I found myself holding a padded blocker while some guy I had never met kicked me and I attempted to “take a hit” and not be a wimp about the whole thing. “Harder!” said the instructor, and the guy hit me solidly. “Whoa! Okay, maybe not that hard!” said the instructor. I began to wonder what I had signed on for here though I got through the class essentially uninjured. I have a few small bruises and a few sore muscles but otherwise I’m okay.

What I’ve learned is that I like the discipline of kick-boxing. I like facing off against the air, letting out some aggression, pushing my body to its limit, and becoming more aware of my limbs flying through space. But I’m not actually keen on hitting people, even with a blocker in the way. This might be the end of my kick boxing career. Thankfully the weather is getting good enough to take up cycling again for the season. With any luck that will result in fewer bruises.

Felted Eggs

2011-04-17T15:06:00.001-07:00

felted eggs, originally uploaded by Amaranth Road Studio.

A trip to Birkeland Brothers on Main Street yesterday resulted in a bag of stunning spring coloured wool roving. A friend and I spent a lovely afternoon making needle felted Easter eggs. I'm tempted to make a whole bunch more just so I can use more of the awesome teal wool.

A hint for getting the egg shape: form your wool roving into a rough oval then roll the egg around in your hands like you would clay. The heat will felt the wool and also create a more tapered shape.

How to Save a Cow

2011-04-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

Today I'm on Life as a Human talking about meat-eating, animal ethics, and how you can fight against factory farming without necessarily becoming a strict vegan or vegetarian.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/feature/how-to-save-a-cow/

In Defense of Fiction

2011-03-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

I'm over at Life as a Human discussing why fiction is important.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/arts-culture/books/in-defense-of-fiction/

And, in celebration of spring, and also for some thought provoking reflection on the state of humanity here is William Wordsworth's poem "Written in Early Spring." With spring erupting in Vancouver now, and with all the horrors going on around the world it seems a fitting piece for the present day.

I heard a thousand blended notes
While in a grove I sat reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What Man has made of Man.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure -
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What Man has made of Man?

Worm Day 2011

2011-03-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

For more information on Worm Day please see the following post from 2009:

http://amaranthroad.blogspot.com/2009/02/worm-day-2009.html

This year's Worm Day is quite late compared to 2008 and 2009 (somehow I missed Worm Day in 2010--I must have been distracted with wedding plans) but this morning I finally encountered a world inundated with the drowned, squished, and sodden worms taking to the pavement to avoid their flooded homes. Spring may bring cherry blossoms to Vancouver but it also brings dead worms.

Spring unfolds slowly in this city. The first flower stalks reach up from the ground as early as January while the rest of the country is still buried in three feet of snow. The spring here is a mixture of intense beauty and extended dreariness. While the cherry trees spread their blossoms over the world like a pink fluffy duvet the skies remain resolutely grey and the rain is relentless. But the temperatures are warmer, sometimes up to 15 degrees and there is a feeling that summer is not far off. The beach calls to me, the trails at the dog park are busier and I can say with certainty that winter, in its dark fury, is over.

The worms always get to me. It's something about the carnage of their soft boneless bodies on the cruel concrete. They remind me of human vulnerability. Particularly in love we lay ourselves bare, coming up from the depths of ourselves gasping for air and begging for the light of our lover's gaze. In our defenseless state we are often trampled, crushed beneath the weight of rejection, sent back to the earth broken and alone. But sometimes when we come up to the surface we find the world bright and shining. We live in the clear glow of love for a time, until our soft bodies return to the earth from which we came.

Poison

2011-03-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

First of all, I love this song. And I love this video in all its '80s glory. And I love Alice Cooper in all his make-up covered weirdness. So here's an oldy, but goody for your listening enjoyment.

Second, our band--Ginger and Pimm's--is working on a cover of this song. So one day soon you may get to hear Alice Cooper's Poison on harp, ukulele, violin, and U-Bass with two female singers.

Agriculture, Food, and Ridiculous Oxymorons

2011-03-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

I was reading the Vancouver Sun today and stumbled upon an article entitled: "Food Firms Go High-Tech, to Get Back to Natural." Follow the link for the full story.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Food+firms+high+tech+back+natural/4470927/story.html

Wait, huh? I'm definitely confused, but I decide to read the article to see what this is about. The first line reads, "Food companies are using a growing arsenal of technological advances to try to make what we eat closer to nature." My blood starts to boil a little bit. I continue reading:

"From sweeteners to proteins to texturizes, companies such as PepsiCo Inc, Cargill Inc and Burcon Nutrascience Corp are employing an army of food scientists to help make the next generation of foods healthier and tastier, with a more understandable ingredient list.
"We are trying to make our products much more simple, much closer to nature," said Kerr Dow, Cargill's vicepresident of global food technology.
"What is great for technology is that that is really quite difficult," Dow said at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit, held this week in London, Paris, Singapore and Chicago."

Now I'm getting ready to pack my bags and move to an acreage somewhere in the remote north where I can homestead. This article is beyond ridiculous. And all this "getting back to nature" stuff is actually a form of clever marketing and deception. People are tricked into thinking that sugary beverages and junk food are now "healthy" because some of the ingredients are derived from "natural" sources, like soy beans:

"Burcon Nutrascience, a Vancouver-based research and development company, recently signed a deal with Archer Daniels Midland Co to sell a soybean protein it developed that can boost the nutritional value of baby formula, sports drinks and juices without a "beany" taste or texture."

But just because an ingredient comes from a recognizably edible food source doesn't mean that it's good for you. Cyanide comes from almonds but you wouldn't want to drink a big batch of cyanide laced soda. It seems to me that the food industry wants to put highly processed, unhealthy ingredients in their products and market them as "natural". A soybean processed beyond all recognition through chemical means is no more "natural" than the other unpronouceable ingredients on a can of soda. Michael Pollan has been passionately pointing out that foods in their most unprocessed state are the ones that we should be eating. An "apple drink" made from sugar, water, and "natural apple flavouring" is not an apple! Nor does it contain any of the nutritional value of an apple, but food corporations would like you to think that it does.

I start to feel a sense of rage as I read that making products "closer to nature...is really quite difficult" technologically. Wait a second, no it isn't! Eating a food that is close to nature is as easy as going outside in Vancouver in August and plucking a blackberry off one of the thousands of prickly blackberry bushes that grow wild in the city; it's as easy as eating an apple rather than buying a highly processed apple turnover that's frozen in a box; it's as easy as using honey as a sweetener rather than white sugar; it's as easy as eating whole grain bread and fruit for breakfast rather than Wonder bread and Froot Loops. A can of pop is not good for you no matter how many "naturally derived" ingredients are put in it. It's still a sugary drink with no nutritional value.

The article goes on to say that food companies are increasing their budgets for research and development in order to develop high-tech (read--more expensive) ways to make their ingredients more natural. The article goes on to say that:

"By 2050 we will need 100 per cent more food and 70 per cent of that will come from new technology," said Tim Hassinger, vice-president of the Crops Global Business Unit of Dow AgroSciences, which is part of Dow Chemical Co. "We believe that."

I'm pretty sure that the world isn't going to live on soft drinks, sports drinks, and baby formula, no matter how many natural ingredients are put in them. Companies are spending insane amounts of money trying to make calorie free cola taste good at the same time that the world is entering a global food crisis. Why not put some money into things that will actually feed the world? If I were starving I'm pretty sure I would rather be given brown rice and some fresh vegetables and some high quality protein instead of a can of fake sugar water that has been "naturally" enhanced so it tastes like real sugar water.

And here's the kicker--at the end of the article I read this:

John Ramsay, chief financial officer for Swiss agricultural company Syngenta, said future generations will likely consume more meat and genetically modified wheat.

What? And this is going to make us healthier how? Picture this--the world of the future is a glorious place where we all dine on GM wheat permeated with toxic pesticides with a side of hormone injected, anti-biotic filled beef that was fed a completely unnatural diet of grains and soy, and to wash it all down we have a tall glass of saccharin liquid made from a no-calorie sweetener and pumped up with some "naturally derived" ingredients that give it a palatable taste and texture. Yup, technology is going to save the world. If anyone is looking for me I'll be taking up residence in the Arctic where I hope that arable land will be abundant in a few years when climate change melts the ice. Feel free to send supplies for a small cabin.

Amusing Facebook Updates

2011-03-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

I have now been on Facebook for less than 24 hours. I already have 61 friends and no doubt, in a few hours I'll have more. It startled me to find that my friend requests were approved at nearly light speed. I mean some were literally approved within seconds!

After amassing some friends I started adding a few details to my profile. Things like school and city were straightforward, but then I tried to state that I'm in a relationship with my husband. Under relationship status I chose "married" then under "to" I typed in my husband's name. I hit enter to send him the relationship status request to approve. But the request wouldn't go through! A big red X showed up and beside it was this message:

M. is already in a relationship.

What?! There's apparently a small glitch in the way Facebook operates. M. has his relationship status set to "married" but since I wasn't a Facebook member until yesterday he couldn't say that he was married to me. When I sent the request the system saw that he was already married and didn't seem to comprehend that it could be me that he was married to. *sigh* *shakes head* Remind me why I'm doing this to myself?

Mission Facebook Rejection: Failed

2011-03-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago I tried a Facebook shunning experiment. I shut down my account and lived a life disconnected from the world’s biggest social network. And for the most part, I enjoyed my Facebook free life. I avoided meaningless distractions, I avoided Farmville, I avoided what Chris Hedges in his book Empire of Illusion refers to as this generation’s obsession with visibility and celebrity. But I also found that I was missing important information. Facebook has become a pervasive and central forum for information dissemination. Some organizations are beginning to use Facebook as their primary mechanism for advertising events and if I’m not logged in I can’t get access to times, dates, and places. I also discovered that a group of friends had used Facebook to organize a reunion and since I wasn’t logged in I didn’t hear anything about it. No other contact mechanisms were used. Finally, I discovered that the number of people reading my blog on a regular basis declined significantly after I stopped posting update links on Facebook.

So as sad as I am to admit this I have come to the conclusion that Facebook has entrenched itself into our ways of interacting and obtaining information so strongly that to decline to participate is to decline membership in an increasingly centralized community. More and more social transactions occur in the Facebook “marketplace”. That marketplace is becoming a monopoly and monopolys are dangerous. Facebook now controls, to a large extent, how we communicate with friends and family. It created a new vocabulary for social acceptance with the “like” button and the advent of status updates.

When we log in to the Facebook marketplace we are salespeople hawking our wares and the wares are ourselves. The goal is to gain currency through “likes” and accruing the most “friends”. What we are selling is an image of ourselves as we would like to be seen to the public and responses to our endless status updates fuel the contention that we can avoid anonymity by broadcasting what we had for breakfast. But we don’t own or control the marketplace--the Facebook corporation does and what they gain is access to an astoundingly huge database of consumers who provide personal information freely and are easily subjected to exploitation. While we are busy selling ourselves to the world at large we are also buying into an emerging paradigm about how the world functions, how personal value is constructed, and how to communicate with friends and acquaintances. There’s no doubt that Facebook is changing the way we interact with each other and while many of the changes disturb me I can’t deny that it’s a convenient way to keep in touch and make sure that people don’t disappear into the ether. It’s also becoming a necessary venue for gaining important information if you can manage to find it buried under the irrelevance.

So while I am very much conflicted about Facebook, I find that rejecting membership has a negative impact on my ability to participate in the communication structures of my friends and family. It is also preventing me from accessing information about local events and with this in mind I think I will have to bite the bullet and set up a new profile. I will do so, however, with a critical eye. I want to remain vigilant about what I am posting and why I am doing so. I want to control how I spend my time on Facebook and remain aware of how the content I post participates in the cult of visibility. I think if I can maintain an investigative stance when it comes to Facebook I may be able to use the good parts of it and avoid some of the more negative aspects. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I would like to try not to be subsumed by its templates and formulaic modes of personal character. I don’t want to be a series of boxes: gender, religious views, birthday, relationship status, favourite movies...But providing information is scarily unavoidable. As I tried to sign up for a new account I found that you are not allowed to register without providing your full birthday and your sex (the only choices are male and female). This bothers me. Maybe I don’t want to say how old I am and I should have the right not to provide that information. And for many “sex” is not a simple matter of choosing “male or female.” Facebook assumes a cookie cutter world in which human beings fit into one of these two categories and ignores the reality that while sex may be biological gender is a totally different thing and falls along a vast continuum, not into two distinct categories. So just on the “create account” page there are two examples of the way Facebook writes human reality and traps us all into pre-made narrative about our lives that may not in any way reflect our reality as human beings living in the world. But perhaps Facebook can still be used to say something more, something beyond what I had for breakfast.

Soul of Orkney

2011-03-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

Sheep on Hoy, Orkney. Andrea Paterson. 2010.

I'm at Life as Human today talking about the Orkney Islands and their power to capture the imagination.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/feature/the-soul-of-orkney/

I Scream, You Scream?

2011-02-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

Breastfeeding has been in the news a lot recently. It's an issue that never gets resolved. The plot goes like this--mother breastfeeds in public, someone is outraged and complains, then mother is outraged that someone complained while she was participating in a life giving function involving her child and protests creating a media frenzy and a whole lot of public debate.

Now in a strange instance of intermingling controversial issues the breastfeeding/breast milk issue has been combined with the organic/healthy food initiative in a totally unexpected way--breast milk ice cream. The following article presents an ice cream shop that is selling vanilla ice cream made from donated breast milk:

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\02\26\story_26-2-2011_pg9_6

It doesn't mention whether the milk was screened for health reasons prior to being churned and that disturbs me a bit, but the concept itself is fascinating once you get over the initial "YUCK" factor.

I've said myself on numerous occasions that it's strange for humans to drink cow milk. Cow milk is for baby cows and our bodies are not really built to digest it. I was joking with M. once that I should start a company that sells human milk. That way women could be paid to donate breast milk and the product would be automatically organic and would not involve the exploitation of animals. It would also provide some cash flow for mothers who desperately need it. Though I don't expect to actually start such a company it seems that the idea wasn't as off the wall as I thought. Though my instinct is to be weirded out by breast milk ice cream, on a logical level it's not so strange. Many of us consumed breast milk in our infancy with great enthusiasm so why is it so strange to think about consuming it as adults? I began to investigate my own reaction to the thought of eating breast milk ice cream and decided that there are some interesting issues at play.

The primary argument seems to be that breast milk is for infants (I'll define this as babies under one year of age). As soon as children hit toddlerhood, develop the ability to walk and talk, and grow some teeth people start to think that it's creepy for them to be breastfeeding. But if we take a second to evaluate this cultural taboo it quickly becomes clear that aversions to breast milk are predominantly social. There's no rational argument against supplementing a two year old's diet with breast milk--a food that can continue to supply excellent nutrition for growing children--so I must conclude that the taboo stems from a societal view that breasts are predominantly sexual in function and once a child develops verbal ability and mobility somehow they are participating in a sexual situation if they are partaking of breast milk. Infants, with less awareness, are seen as innocent enough to be exempt from sexuality in general so there isn't a problem with breastfeeding. This is my theory at least.

Combine the sexualized nature of breasts with a general human aversion to bodily secretions and you can see why people are freaked out by breast milk ice cream. And yet, we're perfectly willing and actually thrilled to eat cow's milk ice cream. And let's face it people, cow's milk is a bodily secretion, and it comes from the udders of cows, and those udders are meant to feed baby cows just like human breasts are meant to feed human babies. But we don't sexualize cows (well okay, maybe there are some rare cases...) but in general cows are not seen as sexual objects, they're seen as sources of food (including meat and milk). And this perception of the cow as a source of food means that we lick up our ice cream cones with gusto and great joy when the heat of summer hits.

So it all comes down to social perception--

Cow = food therefore cow milk ice cream is delicious and socially acceptable
Human breasts = sexual objects there for the pleasure of womens' sexual partners therefore eating anything that comes out of them should be kept to a minimum. We're willing to (sort of) turn a blind eye for the first year of a baby's life, but after that the freaking out starts.

If we could accept that cow milk and human milk are pretty much the same thing in terms of food substances and if we could accept that in fact the primary function of breasts is to create food for other humans then maybe breast milk ice cream wouldn't seem strange at all. If you're willing to drink fluid from the breasts of a cow, an animal that has likely been in less than pretty living circumstances as opposed to say your typical middle class woman who can turn around regularly and doesn't stand ankle deep in her own waste, then I don't see how you can fundamentally be averse to drinking the fluid from a human breast. I'm really interested to hear people's thoughts on this though so feel free to weigh in on the debate!

On Birds and Orchids

2011-02-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

I have two new articles up at Life as a Human:

Chickadee Speaks: A story about our endangered silence

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/eco/environment/chickadee-speaks-reflections-on-our-endangered-silence/

and

The Orchid's Gift: A Valentine's Tale about a flower that gave something back

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/feature/the-orchids-gift-a/

Rush Home Road

2011-02-08T22:58:00.001-08:00

Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While many books have made me ache while confronting the sorrow and the beauty of the world, rarely do books make me cry openly and fully. This book did that. Lansens has written a heartbreaking story of loss and redemption with just enough love for the reader to grasp onto like a raft in turbulent water. The protagonist Addy Shadd draws you into her world and, as if you are a child like Sharla yourself, teaches you the value of forgiveness as well as "how to live simply and simply live."

Lansens infuses her book with vivid scents--pie crusts, strawberries warm in the summer sun, sweat, death, decay, and the algae green smell of Lake Erie. The world she fashions is so close you can almost taste it. She brings you to the brink of human cruelty only to pull back into love--love that is flawed, human, often tragic, but nonetheless love that heals.

I would recommend this to anyone who has ever wondered how to get home.

When Hallmark is Silent

2011-02-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

When a baby dies before it is born there are no words. I mean this in a literal way--there are very few resources for people who want to express their sympathy but aren’t sure how to go about it. Hallmark is completely silent on the issue. While there are cards for the deaths of all kinds of relatives and friends, while there are cards for the deaths of pets, there are no cards for the death of an unborn child. Generic sympathy cards focus on your memories of the one who is lost and the time you got to spend together, so they don’t fit the situation of miscarriage at all.

It’s hard to know what to say when encountering a situation that has no standard rituals. I’m glad to find, though, that there is a movement towards more open discussion and acknowledgment of miscarriage.

I have compiled a short list of good resources for those who have lost a baby and particularly for those who are supporting them:

1. There isn’t much poetry out there about miscarriage but Rachel Barenblat produced a small chapbook of 10 poems after she lost her baby. It gets at the heart of the grieving process and there is a link to a free PDF here:

http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2009/03/miscarriage-poems-through-.html

2. This website sells cards specifically for miscarriage and I was impressed by the sensitivity of the messages that acknowledge that a woman who has miscarried is, indeed, a mother:

http://www.labelledame.com/miscarriage-sympathy-cards.html

3. Strangely there are very few support groups available for those who have experienced pregnancy loss. The only active one that I could find anywhere near Vancouver is in New Westminster. The organization is called Empty Cradle and their website is here:

http://www3.telus.net/public/psns/

4. Men tend to get overlooked during a miscarriage. It’s easy to see that a woman is suffering but it’s sometimes less obvious that the father is in pain as well. The loss is just as much his but it’s easy to forget that. There are some books that address miscarriage from male perspectives that sound good though I haven’t actually read them:

Tim Nelson. A Guide for Fathers When a Baby Dies

Christine O’Keefe Lafser. Empty Cradle, A Full Heart--includes stories about miscarriage by mothers and fathers

Felted Chickadee

2011-01-30T08:06:00.001-08:00

Felted Chickadee, originally uploaded by Amaranth Road Studio.

I made this strange little bird for a friend who very generously gave me a gift of pastel coloured roving. I did resist eating it, but it looked an awful lot like cotton candy in the bag.

False Teeth

2011-01-25T12:07:00.001-08:00

Teeth, originally uploaded by charlesgyoung.

I was handed my teeth in a white cardboard box, as if they were hot cross buns from a bakery at Easter time. They weren’t my real teeth mind you. They were plaster casts that were used to make a mouth guard that will keep me from grinding my teeth to dust while I sleep. But when I went to the dentist to pick up this anti-grinding apparatus I was not expecting to receive a scale model of my own mouth, in gross yellowish plaster, as a parting gift.

“Hold on to these,” said the dental assistant. “If you lose your mouth guard we can likely use the casts to make you a new one.”
I held onto the box containing my teeth and felt a tear in my sense of reality begin to open up like a run in nylons.

It is always odd to see into the parts of yourself that are usually hidden. Surgery, X-rays, CAT scans, blood testing, even looking into a mirror—all of these act as windows into the private spaces of our bodies. The screens guarded carefully by medical personnel give us topographical looks at our internal landscapes and there’s always something vaguely disconcerting about that. When you look at the outline of your own skeleton you think, “That couldn’t possibly be me!” You don’t recognize yourself in skeletal form and so you reject that the bones are an essential part of you.

I felt a sense of unease as I stared at my teeth from a perspective that I am not usually privy to. I could look at the tops of my back molars and see exactly what each ridge and bump looked like. I could see the small serrations of my incisors and the sharp animal vestiges of my canines. I had a compulsion to hide the box of teeth deep inside my backpack. Somehow the thought of people seeing them was eerie. I don’t generally open my mouth wide in mixed company and invite my friends and family to peer in as if examining a horse for good health. And frankly I have no clue what I’m going to do with my mouth casts. Painting them comes to mind, but then if I ever do lose my mouth guard the casts will probably be useless. If I had a good display case full of china and prized possessions I might put them in there, just as a strange uncomfortable joke, but I have no such thing. I wonder if one day some relative will be searching my musty basement long after I’m dead and will stumble upon this odd box containing my teeth and will feel an unnerving intimacy with the embodied person I once was.

I have heard that it’s common to have nightmares about teeth—teeth falling out, teeth decaying etc. This apparently has something to do with anxieties about aging and the inevitability of bodily decay. I’ve had such nightmares myself. I wonder if having an external representation of my essential dental wholeness will fend off these dreams like a talisman.

I’ve been carrying my teeth around all day. I keep thinking of them lying at the bottom of my backpack. I want to pull them out and study them like specimens in a museum, but I suspect that would creep people out. Like so many other things in life my teeth are a secret that must be kept to protect the public from reminders of their own mortality.

Lost Dreams of Motherhood

2011-01-24T11:44:00.001-08:00

Today I'm at Life as a Human sharing an account of miscarriage and what it has meant to my sense of identity.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2011/parenting/lost-dreams-of-motherhood/

Why I've been MIA

2011-01-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

I have been absent from this blog for quite some time. The organic challenge has fallen by the wayside. I haven't been taking pictures. The reason is this: for 10 weeks I was pregnant. Then in very early January I had a miscarriage. My life is now mainly comprised of picking up the pieces and making sense of extraordinary grief. I may very well be absent for awhile longer. The situation seems to require retreating to small places of comfort. Private places. Quiet places. I may very well write about the experience at a later date. My journal is certainly full of pages and pages of writing. But I feel that blogging about it is not yet possible. What I did want to do is acknowledge publicly that it happened. There is a lot of silence surrounding this issue and a lot of misconceptions. For the next while I may post links to poetry, artwork, and other people's writing about the topic, until I can get around to writing my own story. I think it's a story that needs to be told, I just haven't decided how or when or even whether this blog is the right forum. So for now there may be silence. But know that it is not empty silence but a silence full of intention.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

I won't have internet access over the holidays so I'll take this chance to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and happy new year. See you in January with an update on December's organic challenge!

A World Without Miracles

2010-12-22T11:18:00.001-08:00

I'm over at Life as Human today pondering miracles, magic, and the Christmas season.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2010/mind-spirit/spirituality-and-religion/a-world-without-miracles/

When to Buy Organic

2010-12-17T15:09:00.000-08:00

Tractor. Barbialla Organic Farm. Tuscany.

Andrea Paterson. 2010

There has been a lot in the news recently about organics and why it may be healthier for all of us to choose organic foods more often. The Pesticide Action Network of North America just released this article about the connection between pesticide consumption and dementia:

http://www.panna.org/blog/dementia-pesticides-linked-say-researchers

Of course, even with all the research pointing to the dangers of pesticides, GMOs, and hormones in meat the bottom line is that it's not always feasible to buy organic. If you have to choose which produce to buy organic the following list from www.naturalnews.com can help. Some produce absorbs more chemicals than others. And some produce are simply sprayed with more chemicals than others. So if you can only buy a few organic products each shopping trip this would be the place to start:

Apples:

Apples absorb more pesticides than any other fruit. Around 36 different chemicals have been discovered on them. There were as many as seven different chemicals found on a single apple. Therefore, it makes good sense to only purchase these from an organic source. Alternative options for these would be tangerines, bananas and watermelon.

Strawberries:

These are also among the most contaminated fruits you can buy. If you cannot buy these organic, rather opt for kiwifruit or pineapple.

Peaches:

These have also been known to absorb far more chemicals and pesticides than other fruits.

Baby Foods:

Babies and children have developing immune systems, so it's very important for them to be exposed to as little pesticides and chemicals as possible. Wherever possible, purchase organic baby foods, or better still, make and puree your own, using organic fruit and vegetables.

Blueberries:

These may be hailed as a superfood, but this only applies if they are organic. Tests have shown them to be contaminated with as many as 52 different pesticides.

Dairy Products:

Most cows consume grain that contains chemicals, pesticides and antibiotics. Wherever possible, try to source organic dairy products. Or better still, 100% raw milk and cheese will be 100% healthy and nutritious, unlike the pasteurized versions.

Nectarines:

These contain as many as 33 different chemicals and pesticides. If they are not available as organic, safer alternatives would be papaya, watermelon and mango.

Cucumbers:

These have been ranked as one of the most contaminated fresh foods.

Bell Peppers:

Because these have a very thin skin, they absorb pesticides and chemicals very easily. Should they not be available as organic, safer alternatives to these would include peas, cabbage and broccoli.

Grapes:

These can contain as many as 17 different chemicals and pesticides. They are also very high in fructose, so they should be consumed in moderation. Safer alternatives include kiwifruit and raspberries.

Spinach and Kale:

The leaves of these two vegetables are capable of absorbing as many as 48 different pesticides, so it is very important to only use the organic varieties. Safer alternatives would be cabbage, broccoli and asparagus.

Potatoes:

Potatoes have been known to absorb as many as 37 chemicals and pesticides. Safer alternatives to these would be mushrooms, eggplant and cabbage.

Winter Squash:

These have also been known to absorb Dieldrin from soil.

Green beans:

These unfortunately rank high on the contamination list, with as many as 60 different pesticides being used on them.

Meat Products:

Organic meats are always healthier, as they contain no growth hormones and stand little to no chance of containing any pesticide products.

Organic in Vancouver

2010-12-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

Over time I've found some great organics that can be readily found at reasonable prices in many Vancouver grocery stores. I thought I would provide a list of some of my favourites:

1. Corn is one of the products that is most often genetically modified. However, Nature's Path makes organic corn flakes (that are also gluten free!) that come in eco-friendly bags. I also buy Que Pasa corn chips made from organic corn and non GMO canola oil.

2. Milk replacements are always difficult for those with dairy allergies or vegan diets. Happily Silk Soy milk is organic and I just discovered So Good Organic Coconut Milk which sells for about the same price as soy milk minus the potentially dodgy effects of over-processed soy! Yay!

3. No one wants to go without chocolate. Denman Island Chocolate is a local BC company that produces delicious organic dark chocolate.

Sticking to food principles doesn't mean a life of deprivation. There are great products out there. Sometimes it just takes a bit of digging.

Felt for the Holidays

2010-12-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hello blog readers.

Today I'm over at Life as a Human discussing my love of needle felting and how it just might be the solution to last minute Christmas gift making panic.

http://lifeasahuman.com/2010/home-living/felt-for-the-holidays/

Choice of Chickens

2010-12-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

As suspected I have already run into some major challenges with my Organic Project. There I was, standing in the Choices Market, staring at a selection of whole chickens. There was the certified organic chicken that priced in at about $24 for a rather small bird and there was a "specialty" chicken that came in at $18 for a slightly larger bird. Of course, both of these prices are higher than the $12 I'm used to paying for a conventional, battery farmed chicken so I set about discovering what the differences were.

Conventional Chicken:

Factory/Battery farmed.
Likely given feed laced with hormones and antibiotics to promote faster growth and to counteract the high risk of disease that accompanies the horrific living conditions of these animals.
Feed is likely contains GM ingredients and may even contain animal byproducts and other things that chickens would not normally eat.
Not likely a local meat product

Specialty Chicken: The "Specialty" label doesn't mean anything in and of itself, but reading the label revealed the following:

Local BC chicken raised on a family owned farm. This is a bit vague as it didn't say anything about what sort of farm it was. It could have been a family owned factory farm for all I knew!
Chickens fed a natural diet of grains grown on the farm with no strange byproducts--but feed could have been GM. There was no information about the GM status of the soy and corn these chickens were given amongst other things.
Chickens were not fed antibiotics or hormones.

Organic Chicken

Certified organic which means no GM feed, no antibiotics or hormones.

So I had a bit of a conundrum. After much debate I went with the "specialty" chicken as a compromise. It fit my local criteria and was at least free of hormones and antibiotics if not GM feed. Farm conditions were vague but I had to balance cost as well and the specialty chicken was more affordable. I figure I did better than conventional but not as well as fully organic so at least it's a start!

In the meantime I made a huge batch of borscht which was quite cost effective though doesn't contain fully organic ingredients. The vegetables and broth are organic but the meat isn't. Again, it's a balancing act and compromise is going to be necessary to meet both philosophical and budgetary goals. I figure if at the end of this experiment I save money and at least reduce exposure to chemicals, toxins, and GM foods then I'm doing pretty well.

Finally, here's my organic tip for the week: Buy cabbage! Cabbage is a very good deal. It's nutrient dense, goes a long way in filling out a soup, and even organic cabbage is quite cheap. You should be paying under a dollar a pound for cabbage, even if it's organic. It's an underestimated vegetable that is flavourful with a good crunchy texture if not overcooked.

Oraganic Challenge: Day 1

2010-12-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

Well here I am on the first day of my organic challenge. One of the ways that I'm hoping to buy organic while still cutting down on my food bill is by considering the nutrition:cost ratio of the foods I'm buying. I'll try to buy foods that are the most nutrient dense for their price. I'm pretty sure that soups will be on the menu a lot since you can put basically anything in soup and make it taste delicious. Broths are inexpensive if you make them from scratch using leftover bones and scraps from dinner. You can save those limp and unappetizing vegetables that have been hanging out in your crisper as well. Rather than throwing them out store them in a plastic bag in the freezer and then throw them into your broth for enhanced flavour and nutrition.

I made up a soup the other day using ingredients that were on hand, cheap, and filling. The soup has lasted an entire week--that's six lunches for me and soup for both M. and I at dinner on about three nights for a total of 12 meals (and that's keeping in mind that M. can put away 2-3 times the amount of food I eat at dinner!)

RANDOM SOUP:

Duck carcass including organs with some meat still attached. I had a duck cooking adventure a few weeks ago and saved the leftovers for making soup.

bag of frozen veggie odds and ends (carrot bits, potato peels, limp green onions etc.)

Put the duck (or chicken or whatever you're using) into a large stock pot and completely cover with water. Simmer for at least an hour. Then add the veggies and simmer for at least another half hour. Remove the veggies and the bones and season your broth with whatever spices you like. I found my broth was a little bit bland so I added one liter of prepared chicken broth to fill it out. Once the broth is done you can throw in whatever other ingredients you have. I added the following:

1 purple cabbage--cabbage is great for you and quite cheap

1 bag of yellow lentils--beans are a good, cheap source of protein

A chopped onion (fried first in some of the duck fat that I saved)

1 can of tomato paste

2 leeks--chopped

a dash of hot chili sauce and a bunch of other seasonings in proportions I can't even recall.

I admittedly made this soup before starting the organic challenge so not all of the ingredients were organic (in particular the duck was not organic so that's big time cheating). But the principle holds--soup will be a staple in the future as I try to find ways to use the ingredients that I can source.

Food Challenge

2010-11-30T09:54:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about food recently--about where it comes from, about what it’s made of, about what it’s hiding. Without going on a huge tirade I have a few major concerns including GMOs, overuse of carcinogenic pesticides, antibiotics and hormones in meat, and the destruction of small scale farming by agribusiness. Lots of people have written about these issues in far more convincing and detailed way then I can possibly do here. Specifically Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, Brian Brett’s Trauma Farm, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and documentaries Food Inc. and The World According to Monsanto. In terms of websites the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network at www.cban.ca has a lot of information about genetic engineering. There are tons of other good sources out there as well and I can’t possibly list them all here (although perhaps I’ll make that a future project), but the bottom line is that I’m worried about what I’m eating, what food is doing to my health, and what food production is doing to the health of the planet.

I currently have three food related priorities, and they are:

1. Avoid GMOs. This means avoiding all corn, soy, canola, sugar beet, and animal products that are not certified organic. I do not believe that the testing on GM foods has been rigorous enough to prove that they’re safe for human consumption, and the increase in pesticide use that GM farming entails is most definitely not good for the environment or biodiversity.
2. Eat local when possible. Supporting local farmers is good for communities, for the local economy, and for the planet.
3. Eat organic. This is contentious. Lots of people like to argue that organic food is pretentious and simply a fad perpetuated by the rich and snobby. I would like to ask what is snobby and pretentious about wanting to eat the kind of clean, chemical free, ecologically friendly food that your grandparents would have eaten. I just don’t buy the snob argument but I recognize the opinions vary widely. Personally I’m worried about pesticide levels in “conventionally” produced food (and by the way, when did spraying your apples with deadly chemicals become “conventional”?). Washing your produce doesn’t get rid of all the chemical residue and many studies point to a link between pesticide consumption and a variety of cancers. Conclusive or not there’s enough information out there to make me wary and so I’d like to eat as much organic food as possible.

So starting on December 1st I am self imposing a food challenge. I will avoid GMOs, eat local, and eat organic whenever possible. I don’t expect to be able to do all three of these things all the time. For instance the local food I can source may not be organic and the GMO free food may not be local etc. But I hope to generally increase my consumption of GMO free, local, organic food. And in order to prove that doing so is not elitist I am challenging myself to do this while also decreasing our monthly grocery bill. My very ambitious goal is to cut my grocery bill in half, which would mean a monthly budget of $400. I think that this is unlikely and that a $500-$600 monthly bill is more possible, but I’m going to aim for the $400 anyway and see what happens. This is of course made more difficult due to dietary restrictions. Wheat is cheap but I won’t be eating any of that.

To keep myself accountable and to track progress I’ll be posting on the blog about how things are going. I’ll likely include some resources, some discussion of pressing issues, some tips for cooking nutritious food on a budget, and some humorous descriptions of my inevitable failures.

Tomorrow--the challenge begins.

Warning: Politics Ahead

2010-11-19T11:11:00.000-08:00

I have not, in the past, used this blog to advance political views or talk about anything that's particularly contentious. I'm a little wary about doing so. This blog is sort of like sitting down to dinner and there's that age old rule about not discussing religion or politics if you want to avoid arguments and personal offense. That being said, there are a large number of issues going on in the world that I'm concerned about, feel strongly about, and feel that other people should know about. So I'm going to stick my neck out and hope that the occasional political post results in healthy debate and not the creation of enemies.

So here's today's politically oriented post. The following article was recently published in the Vancouver Sun. This issue has been discussed in numerous other publications as well (See for instance David Suzuki's Website) The Vancouver Sun article outlines the recent rejection of a climate bill in the Senate. A bill that had already been passed TWICE by MPs in the House of Commons. Harper's main argument against the bill is that reducing carbon emissions to the specified target would result in major job loss. This contention is up for debate. Governments around the world are recognizing that our dependence on fossil fuels and the massive quantities of pollution this produces is getting us into deep, deep trouble. It's possible, even likely, that we're escalating a process of global warming. Even if that's not true, and (as some sources argue) global warming is simply a natural process that the earth has undergone more than once during its history, we're certainly poisoning our environment with tons of filthy emissions. Not doing anything about this is short sighted--saving the economy now is ridiculous if the end result is environmental disaster that results in the deteriorating health or death of huge numbers of people. Climate change issues aside Harper has proven himself to be highly hypocritical (this article states that "As recently as three years ago, Harper argued it would be intolerable for unelected senators to defy elected members of Parliament")--not the sort of person I trust to run the country. In any event, here's the article, and you can draw your own conclusions.

If after reading this article you want to take action there is an automated letter here that will allow you to enter your postal code and send a letter of protest to your local MP as well as the leaders of the Canadian governmental parties.

Abandoning reform, Harper uses Senate to sink climate bill

Prime Minister Stephen Harper fell back on an "end-justifies-the-means" defence this week for the sneak attack by Conservative senators who torpedoed a climate-change bill already passed by the House of Commons.

There was no sign in his response of the old reformer of high principle who used to rail against any notion that the then-Liberal dominated Senate might sink or even hold up any legislation.

As recently as three years ago, Harper argued it would be intolerable for unelected senators to defy elected members of Parliament.

It was a message that resonated with many Canadians, especially here in the West where disdain is particularly acute for the institution that many see as the ultimate symbol of patronage and pork-barrel politics.
That was before Harper abandoned his promise never to appoint a senator and stuffed the Senate full of his own yes-men and yes-women, before what used to be abhorrent became first tempting, then convenient.
In question period Wednesday, Harper said the Senate killed a climate-change bill that had been passed not once but twice by the majority of MPs in the House of Commons because it was "completely irresponsible."
The bill called on the government to set carbon reduction targets closer to what scientists say are needed to ward off destructive climate change.

Harper says the bill is irresponsible because it would have required throwing "hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people out of work" to achieve the targets.

That's unlikely, given the way successive governments have ignored climate-change commitments. But even if Harper really believed the legislation was a threat to the Canadian economy, that belief didn't justify the further damage to the image of the Senate and all politicians he inflicted by so blatantly disregarding his earlier promises to do things differently.

It's that promise that makes Harper's use of patronage appointees to achieve what he couldn't get done with his elected supporters in Parliament so odious.

People voted for Harper with the expectations he raised that when he became prime minister, the most visible changes in Ottawa wouldn't just be the name of the party in power or just one privileged set of insiders replacing another.

He promised real Senate reform, so that the upper chamber wouldn't just be a lapdog for the government, but an elected body that represented the folks who voted for them, that in the "Triple E" jargon was also equal and effective.

It's true that he has been unable to deliver on that promise in part because he has never achieved majority control of Parliament. The Conservatives made that point again on Thursday by seeking unanimous consent, which they knew would be denied, for a bill that would create an eight-year term limit for senators.
But more to the point, he has failed because reforming the Senate requires something he never could have delivered, a constitutional amendment that is arguably out of reach in our regionally focused country.
What we have learned in the meantime is that Harper is not the reformer he pretended to be. He has no more interest than any prime minister before him in creating a Senate that has the ability to independently represent Canadians, that can, in fact, operate as a chamber of sober, second thought. What he wants and what he created by offering what are still among the juiciest patronage plums available is another partisan tool to do his bidding.

Along the way, he added to the conventional wisdom that politicians can never be trusted to keep their promises. How sad.

cmcinnes@vancouversun.com

Skunk Encounter

2010-11-18T09:50:00.001-08:00

Skunk , originally uploaded by floridapfe.

I have to admit that I've been suffering from a sense of hopelessness recently. I encounter depressing news about the state of the planet on a daily basis and am beginning to panic about things like global warming, GMOs, wars, the exploding global population, the near monopoly of biotechnology company Monsanto that is trying to control our food supply, pesticides, deforestation and environmental degradation, air pollution, water pollution, the peak oil crisis, super-bugs, super-weeds, Sarah Palin running for President...you get the point. These issues are important and action needs to be taken in relation to all of them so that the human race doesn't wipe itself out through greed and corruption, but I'm finding that constant exposure to terrifying news is beginning to affect my ability to function on a day to day basis.

So here's my plan: To counteract the damaging effect of too much bad news I will attempt to post something happy, joyous, and perhaps humorous on a weekly basis. I won't ignore the bad news, and I'll continue to think about ways to make the world a better place and enact strategies in my daily life to improve the planet, but in the meantime I think I'm desperately in need of some levity and perhaps this blog is too.

Today's happy story is this: A week ago I almost got sprayed by a skunk but didn't.

I was walking to my violin lesson. It was dark. I came around a corner moving at quite a clip and then, out of the gloom, a skunk came waddling towards me. I don't know what a hostile skunk looks like and I wasn't sure if this one was mad at me and I had this horrible moment where I was sure that this skunk, that was only four feet away, was going to spray me and I would smell like rotten eggs for the rest of my life and no one would love me and I'd have to live in a paper bag on East Hastings forever where I would be shunned by the crack addicts for smelling so bad...

But it didn't happen.

I crossed the street and the skunk waddled on its way, disappearing into a nearby hedge. I went to my lesson and life continued on as usual. Disaster was averted and I am currently enjoying the above picture of baby skunks so cute that it hurts. And that's my good news for today.

Do the Amish Use Facebook?

2010-11-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

Hello blog readers. Today I'm over at Life As a Human--a new online life magazine that I've just started writing for. You can find my first post here:

http://lifeasahuman.com/2010/home-living/lifestyle/do-the-amish-use-facebook/

As of this past week I will be a regular contributor to Life as a Human content and will let you know when I have articles up. I'll keep posting regularly on the blog as well!

Also, if you have some time it's well worth perusing the archive of articles at Life as a Human. There are some excellent and thought provoking pieces there dealing with how it is we live in this world and the oddities that arise from being human.

Felt Overload

2010-11-08T12:15:00.000-08:00

I've been on a bit of a felting frenzy recently. I'm not sure what's sparked it but I have this endless desire to puncture wool with a barbed needle until it becomes these unbearably cute fluffy creatures with shiny bead eyes that make me smile every time I look at them. I feel that I want to populate ever corner of my apartment with a felt zoo. I hope this doesn't mean that I'm headed for a life of withdrawn strangeness a la Laura Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie. I also hope that my home won't be overrun by adorable balls of fuzz like in the epic Star Trek classic The Trouble with Tribbles. But despite misgivings about my psychological state and space issues in our apartment I can't seem to stop making felt creatures. So here are pictures of the latest two:

Herbert the Hedgehog. Copyright Andrea Paterson. 2010

I had a sudden desire to make a hedgehog. I don't know where the compulsion came from. I've seen an awful lot of adorable hedgehog things on Etsy lately so perhaps that's what did it. As it turns out making a felt hedgehog is trickier than I imagined. The problem is making the quill-like fur. I think this hedgehog ended up looking more like it has dreadlocks than anything else but I maintain that that's part of his charm.

Hedgehog Meets Pear. Copyright Andrea Paterson. 2010

Mouse Love. Copyright Andrea Paterson. 2010

I admit that this mouse is holding a heart only because I screwed up the length of the arms and they looked a little weird sticking straight out of the body. I'm happy for the accident though because the heart kicked the cuteness factor into overdrive. The mouse is made out of merino, which has a totally different texture than the corriedale I've been predominantly using. The merino is a bit more finicky and doesn't seem to felt as easily or firmly, but it creates a softer surface with a smoother appearance so is great for a mouse. (I think it will make good snowmen as well, and I may try that next.)

Mouse and Heart. Copyright Andrea Paterson. 2010

Standing Stones

2010-11-04T11:09:00.000-07:00

Standing Stones by Loreena McKennitt
Illustrated with pictures of the Ring of Brodgar from my recent trip to Orkney.
All photos copyright Andrea Paterson. 2010.

In one of these lonely Orkney Isles
There dwelled a maiden fair.
Her cheeks were red, her eyes were blue
She had yellow curling hair.
Which caught the eye and then the heart
Of one who could never be
A lover of so true a maid
Or fair a form as she.

Across the lake in Sandwick
Dwelled a youth she held most true,
And ever since her infancy
He had watched those eyes so blue.
The land runs out into the sea -
It's a narrow neck of land -
Where weird and grim the Standing Stones
In a circle where they stand.

One bonny moonlight Christmas Eve
They met at that sad place
With her heart in glee and the beams of love
Were shining on her face.
When her lover came and he grasped her hand
What loving words they said.
They talked of future's happy days
As through the stones they strayed.

They walked toward the lovers' stone
And through it passed their hands.
They plighted there a constant troth
Sealed by love's steadfast bands.
He kissed his maid and then he watched her
That lonely bridge go o'er.
For little, little did he think
He wouldn't see his darling more.

Standing Stones of the Orkney Isles
Gazing out to sea
Standing Stones of the Orkney Isles
Bring my love to me.

He turned his face toward his home
That home he did never see.
And you shall have the story
As it was told to me.
When a form upon him sprang
With a dagger gleaming bright,
It pierced his heart and dying screams
Disturbed the silent night.

This maid had nearly reached her home
When she was startled by a cry.
She turned to look around her
And her love was standing by,
His hand was pointing to the stars
His eyes glazed at the light,
And with a smiling countenance
He vanished from her sight.

She quickly turned and home she ran
Not a word of this was said,
For well she knew at seeing his form
That her faithful love was dead.
And from that day she pined away,
Not a smile seen on her face.
With outstretched arms she went to meet him
In a brighter place.

Standing Stones of the Orkney Isles
Gazing out to sea
Standing Stones of the Orkney Isles
Bring my love to me.

Needle Felting for Fall

2010-11-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

Felt Bear. Andrea Paterson. 2010

I've been working on some needle felting projects and am including the most recent here. All sculptures are made out of 100% wool roving. The bear is 3.5 inches tall, the pumpkin is 2 inches tall to the top of the stem and 2.5 inches wide. I glued a small magnet on to the back of the ladybug and she is now happily living on my fridge. She measures one inch.

Felt Bear and Apple. Andrea Paterson. 2010

Felt Pumpkin and Wheat. Andrea Paterson. 2010

Felt Ladybug Reading Dandelion Journal of Literature. Andrea Paterson. 2010

Adventures in Applesauce

2010-10-26T15:31:00.001-07:00

An apple a day.., originally uploaded by Nina_999.

My Baba (Ukrainian for Grandmother) has a cellar that can be accessed by a set of steep concrete stairs in her garage. When I was a child she would sometimes send me down there to fetch a jar of home preserves from the wooden shelves. It might be pickles, tomato sauce, or apple sauce--whatever was required for the particular meal at hand. I was afraid of the cellar. It was dark down there and I felt claustrophobic with the thick grey walls pressing in on me. But the trip was worth it for the opportunity to pluck one of hundreds of jars full of carefully canned food from the wall and hear the satisfying pop of the vacuum sealed top coming off. The applesauce sticks out in my mind. Baba always left it coarsely mashed so the consistency was much like apple pie filling and not at all like the over pureed mush that you find in grocery stores. Sorry Motts, but Baba has you beat hands down. It was the best applesauce in the world and to be given a jar to take home was a prize beyond measure.

It’s apple season in Vancouver and the profusion of locally grown fruit in a multitude of varieties got me thinking about applesauce. It got me thinking about breakfast at Baba’s where we would sit around her kitchen table eating her home made applesauce on buttered toast. It got me thinking about canning--how Baba would rush out to buy pounds and pounds of cheap, in season produce and put it up in lovely glass mason jars for the winter. Canning is something that people are returning to as we realize that our current food trends are just not sustainable. Yes, you can buy strawberries from California in January, but we’re beginning to recognize that this might not be a good idea if we hope to have preserve the planet’s resources for future generations. Not to mention the fact that shipping food halfway around the world means that everyone is devouring flavourless fruit more rich in pesticides than vitamins. It makes sense to buy produce when it’s in season, locally available, and at its peak in freshness and flavour. And if you want to have some of that fruit in the winter, well why not buy it in bulk and preserve it?

With nostalgia and concern for the state of global agriculture driving me I decided to embark on my very first canning adventure. I was a bit sad that Baba was too far away to act as my teacher, but she was certainly there in spirit. My mother-in-law has boiling water canning supplies and she was gracious enough to lend me her kitchen and her wisdom to help me stumble through the process. It’s not actually that difficult but requires a lot of care. My overactive imagination was cooking up a scenario in which I poison both myself and M. with botulism after serving improperly preserved applesauce. But poisoning yourself with home canning is highly unlikely--if your jars are tightly sealed and the lids are difficult to pry off when you first open them.

Canning is a bit magical actually and I found myself highly enjoying the entire process. With the jars sterilizing in simmering water and my apple harvest cooking on the stove the kitchen took on a festive air. After the jars were packed and the lids screwed on loosely the whole batch of applesauce went into the boiling water canner where 20 minutes of processing is sufficient. The heat creates pressure inside the jars which forces the air out from under the lids and a vacuum is created inside. Eventually the sealing compound inside the lids is activated and you end up with hermetically sealed jars of food. So simple, yet so incredible! As I pulled out each shining jar I was left with a huge sense of accomplishment and was already planning my next canning project.

I cracked open the first jar of applesauce last night. I was trying not to set my expectations too high but I was hoping that this applesauce might be just a little bit like Baba’s. Foods have this uncanny ability to transport you to places that exist only in memory. And so it was when I tasted that first spoonful of applesauce. Immediately I was back in Baba’s kitchen. I could feel the slick surface of her table beneath my elbows, see the particular pattern of her dishes, and hear the voices of Baba and Guido as they served my brother and I breakfast. The applesauce was so much like Baba’s I was actually a little frightened. Having that jar of applesauce sitting on my table was almost like having Baba and Guido in the room with me--they felt so close that I almost expected Baba to step into view and ask me to run down to the basement to retrieve another jar.

A Cure for Whooping Cough

2010-10-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

Cow and One Day Old Calf. Orkney, Scotland. Andrea Paterson. 2010

I forget what the world sounds like: The baby-bird-peeping of the planet suffocates under hoarse industrial hacking. The song is swallowed by a perpetual state of Whooping Cough.

Walking to work in the morning creates the sort of terror one might feel walking through the hospital emergency room--terror incited by the crushing cacophony of death and contagion the presses in on you until you feel madness sparking. And so it is during my ten minute journey from the bus stop to my office where I am pursued by the jarring crash of development: Debris flying down demolition pipes; the aggressive roar of dump trucks, lawn mowers, and leaf blowers; the obnoxious beep of monstrous vehicles backing up; cursing from overhead construction workers; the endless endless drone of traffic coming down Marine Drive every second of every tortured, over-saturated day.

There is no escape. Nothing can soften the mechanical symphony that only ever plays the pounding, kick-drum climax and never recedes to the sweet swell of ocean waves or the melodious flute solo of the wind.

It often feels that the most glorious sound in the world would be a one hour stretch of uninterrupted silence. Not empty silence, but the kind that holds mysteries, the kind of silence that is made up of only natural sounds, unspoiled by human interventions.

I found such silence standing on the sea spanning cliffs of the Orkney Islands where I recently spent my honeymoon. In Orkney the wind commands attention, pulling your hair like a teasing boy, howling in your ear like a cat in heat, then falling into a lover’s whisper. Over the cliff edge is the beckoning and deadly-beautiful North Sea, smashing the rocks to smithereens. The earth’s demolition crew is much more subtle than its freight train human imitators. The earth leaves spaces where the soul can alight, listen to the swish of grass, the lullaby of water tricking down a long cataract, the meditative “ohm” of bumblebees.

By silence I don’t mean an absence of sound but an absence of noise. Where noise is the mind-numbing, insanity producing, industrial screech of the modern world imposing its terrible order and sound is the collection of aural sensations that indicate the living nature of the earth. The wind is the earth breathing and when you have room to hear this sound you begin to hear your own breath as a counterpuntal melody.

I can’t fit myself into the egotistical run-on monologue of the fork lifts and nail guns. But in a space of natural sounds there are pauses: ellipses, commas, even full-stops where I can cozy in like a bird in a nest and find the cadence of my own voice.

Driven to the edge of insanity by the omnipresence of noise I try very hard to return to Orkney in my mind--that place where there are seabirds and the bleat of lambs, a place full of sounds that remind you that you are made of flesh not sheet metal and screws, sounds that connect you to the land and place into your cupped hands the gift of silence.

Address to a Haggis

2010-10-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Peat Fire by Andrea Paterson. Orkney. 2010

I recently returned from my month long honeymoon in Italy and Scotland and have much to tell about my sojourn. But first, since I just spent one week on the remote Northern island of Orkney in Scotland I feel that it is my duty to talk a bit about Haggis.

Robbie Burns is probably the most famous person to grace literature with a discussion of this traditional Scottish dish. Burns suggests in his famous poem “Address to a Haggis” that it is the hearty and sustaining Haggis that gives the Scots their burly strength. He writes (this is translated from the original Scottish dialect):

But take note of the strong haggis fed Scot
The trembling earth resounds his tread
Clasped in his large fist a blade
He'll make it whistle
And legs and arms and heads he will cut off
Like the tops of thistles

I’m not going to argue that Haggis will turn you into a warrior with the strength of an ox, or fill you with unrestrained blood-lust, but I will argue that the poor Haggis is an under appreciated dish that doesn’t deserve its reputation as a vile, stomach churning concoction dreamt up by ancient barbarian hoards. I think most of the problem is semantic. Descriptions of Haggis just don’t do it justice. No one really wants to eat the guts of a sheep mixed with oatmeal and spices boiled in the animal’s own stomach, offal sounds too much like “awful” to be palatable, and the whole thing conjures up the image of a filthy Scottish housewife stuffing the cast off remains from the butcher’s bench into a horrifying sausage casing then passing it off as dinner.

So now I have to admit this: I’ve eaten haggis. I’ve actually eaten haggis more than once because after scrounging up the courage to try it I discovered that it’s actually delicious and now I feel strongly that it should be redeemed with more appealing descriptions of its virtues. So let’s pretend for a moment that we’re all sitting in a fancy Vancouver restaurant. One of the food fusion sort of places that pride themselves on creative food pairings and choice ingredients from local sources. You’re perusing the menu now trying to decide on your main course having just devoured an appetizer of smoked goat cheese with cranberry compote served with a burnt onion crepe. The list of possibilities is extraordinary, but your eye settles upon the following:

Grass fed spring lamb delicately seasoned with fresh herbs and mixed with organic oatmeal. Served with roasted parisienne potatoes and agave glazed carrots.

I think that people might actually order Haggis if it were described like this and the diner would be treated to a warm and satisfying meal of slightly piquant meat mixed with the nutty flavour of stone ground oats.

Still not convinced? Okay, well consider this--have you ever eaten a hotdog? Have you ever eaten a sausage on a warm summer evening slathered in onion and mustard residing deliciously in a fresh baked bun? If so you’ve eaten parts of animals that are far more off-putting than what you’ll find in haggis, including ground up bone. The meat in Haggis if of higher quality than your average sausage and far outstrips the lowly hotdog.

In Orkney, snug in a beautifully converted Croft cottage with a view of the endless fields and the wind swept grasses I fried haggis for my breakfast. I read a story about Earl Magnus, an ancient Orkney martyr whose bones are interred at St. Magnus’ Cathedral in Kirkwall. I listened to the gale whistle through every crack in the wall and saw the cattle bracing themselves against its raw force. I watched clouds race across the sky like greyhounds and held tea in a handcrafted pottery mug in dark shades of black and blue. Fortified on Scotland’s most talked about food I set out to explore Orkney’s wild cliffs and ended the hike at the Old Man of Hoy, a massive sea stack that cannot help but be phallic, driving up from the deadly rocks of the North Sea. There was no sound but the whip of the wind and the erosive crash of waves against the precarious cliff faces. I have always felt very much at home in Scotland, haggis and all.

Love Underground

2010-09-09T12:00:00.001-07:00

carrot love, originally uploaded by Amaranth Road Studio.

The carrot is a mysterious thing--growing in the velvet darkness of the earth, hiding the vibrant orange of its soul from the world, showing only leafy fronds to inquisitive above ground dwellers. The carrot lives a secretive existence so it’s no wonder that it gets lonely every once in awhile and just like us begins groping in the dark for a nearby body to hold, something to remind it in its blindness that it is safe and secure. Surely there must be moments of deep fear in a carrot’s subterranean life, moments when it fears for its future, wonders about that inevitable instant when it will be plucked from its bed and exposed to the harsh rays of the sun. Perhaps carrots have tales about a light at the end of a long tunnel, a glow that signals their journey to another realm of existence from which there is no return. We mortals can understand, then, the desire to cling to what is known and familiar, to cling to those around us, to cling to the shreds of our lives with intense desperation, especially when we know our time grows short.

When I found these two carrots (pictured above) intertwined at my local grocery store I dreamed for them a history, a mythology, a life. They looked so human, wrapped around each other in an embrace of love, or fear, or comfort. I could imagine them underground winding themselves together in an attempt to thwart the tug of hungry humans. Perhaps the life after is more bearable with a companion. Certainly any life is enriched by love, by closeness, by the surety of fingers laced with yours and the warmth of another body. I thought how so many of us ache to achieve what these two delicate roots have achieved--merging our physical selves with another so completely that we will never have to be alone again. We want to wrap ourselves up in the substance of another because we think it makes us more concrete, ties us more securely to our earthly existence. How can we die if our being is integral to the existence of another? We aim to cheat death by making ourselves essential to the lives of those we love.

Having encountered two deaths in my family recently I see that those we love do wind themselves into our being. The memories of those I have lost become tangled with my own sense of self. I look at myself in the mirror and catch small glimpses of the people they were--in the way I walk, in the way I inflect certain words. While you can’t see their souls you can see the leafy fronds that emerge on the surface of my own daily living. Each memory signals the place where roots reside, brings awareness to an ancient planting within me. When you are finally pulled up from the earth, when the dirt is shaken from your trembling body, when you are washed clean and exposed to the light it will be clear that you are not alone. You are coiled around the memories of a whole genealogical past. You keep the memories alive, the memories nourish your soul and a vibrant symbiosis emerges under the carefully tilled surface of your smile.

One More Sorrow

2010-08-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

Photo by Andrea Paterson

My grandmother passed away suddenly last Saturday. I have no words now except for these that I composed for her eulogy:

Grandma's life was a deeply storied one, lived at the cross point between adventure and narrative. She was a woman who always had the right word and could recall the names of all the plants and animals that populated her daily landscape. As a young child and through my adult life I beheld this as a great and slightly magical power. She could walk out on her back deck into the midst of her wildly blooming garden and call out to the birds by name. She would point out the Mourning Doves, the Ruby Throated Hummingbirds, the Red Headed Woodpeckers, and the Robins that heralded the return of spring. I would stand watching, amazed at her ability to know intimately the migratory visitors in her back yard sanctuary.

But her world didn't stop at the edge of her garden. She was endlessly curious and travelled widely. She brought back stories from what I saw as highly exotic places—the castles of England that she explored with her sister Lois, the mountains of Switzerland, and the whole of the British countryside. She was knowledgeable about history and kings. She sent chills up my spine relating tales of the brutal European monarchy and their dreams of conquest. When she described standing inside the inner circle of Stonehenge staring up at the majesty of the rocks making up that ancient ring her eyes would shine with excitement and the joy that comes from telling a great story. Through recounting her travels and reading to me when I was young she nurtured my own sense of adventure and passed on a passionate love for books. When I stayed at her house we would both climb into bed at night with a plate of buttered Digestive biscuits, a glass of milk, and a book to prop up on our knees. She would read mysteries, I would read the Bobsey Twins and we shared our certainty that good stories are integral to a good life.

Grandma never stopped pursuing adventure and collecting good yarns. During her last days she was busy planning a trip to New York and helping my father trace our family history—giving him the gift of names and anecdotes to carry from here and share with generations to come. She wasn't afraid to face death. She said to my mother that if she died she would finally get to see what lies beyond this life. It was another chapter in her life's story, something to meet with curiosity and incredible bravery. And while she's gone to discover what heaven really is she's left the stories in our keeping. And there are lots of them.

Like the time she put an overzealous cosmetician in her place at the Bay. Grandma, at 80 years of age, was passing through the cosmetics section on her way somewhere else when she was stopped by a chipper, heavily perfumed saleswoman who was trying to hawk anti-wrinkle cream.

“It will make you look 10 years younger!” the girl exclaimed.

Grandma, not one to be scammed, said to the girl in a complete deadpan, “Great, so I'll look 70 instead of 80” and left the girl speechless.

And there was a story she told about her teenaged years during the war. Her father didn't let her and Lois date much, but they were allowed to go out with the Officers because their father believed in the old adage of “an officer and a gentleman.”

“Well,” Grandma said to me. “We didn't disillusion him.”

Our job now is to remember the stories that we have been entrusted with, to share them, and to weave them into the narratives of our own lives. I think the greatest tribute we can give her is to go out into the world with an open mind and a sense of awe. Grandma embraced life wholeheartedly—telling her story with grace and wit. It is up to us to do the same, to keep writing our family's history and never shy away from the next adventure.

From Market to Yum!

2010-08-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

Harvest. Andrea Paterson. 2010

On Saturday I took my first trip to the Vancouver Farmer's Market downtown and, honestly, it was one of the most exciting food shopping experiences I've ever had. Produce overflowed from cardboard boxes and burlap bags. People were milling about happily filling reusable bags with unusual fruits, organic vegetables, and waxed paper wrapped packages of grass fed, hormone free, antibiotic free meat. I perused all the booths carefully to see what choices I had before deciding on the morning's purchase and I had a really hard time not lugging home pounds of food that would rot in my fridge before I got a chance to eat it. Eventually I decided on a selection of heirloom tomatoes, some glossy purple peppers, two varieties of peaches, red pears, and (the splurge of the day) four all natural lamb chops.

After spreading this food out on my kitchen table I thought long and hard about what to do with it. The tomatoes called to me with their intriguing colours and amusing shapes. They looked like huge candies ranged out on my counter and I wanted to do them justice. One of my favourite summer BBQ foods is bruschetta. My uncle always whips up batches of his famous bruschetta at pool parties and before I discovered a gluten intolerance I would wolf it down piled on toasted slices of baguette. This time around I would have to forgo the baguette, but I've recently discovered Silver Hill's Chia Bread and that made an excellent replacement. The gluten free bread that's on the market tends to be full of highly processed rice flour and a host of unpronounceable ingredients. Silver Hill's Chia Bread is the first offering I've run across that has a completely normal and chemical free ingredient list and a great nutritional profile. Other gluten free bread could be used as well.

Gluten Free Heirloom Tomato Bruschetta

About 6 heirloom tomatoes (a variety of kinds and colours), diced
1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes packed in oil
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup fresh basil, stems removed, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
6 slices Silver Hill's Chia Bread, brushed with olive oil, toasted under the broiler, and cut into four squares each

Add all ingredients together and let marinate in a bowl for half an hour. Enjoy on toasted Chia bread or with corn chips. Note that gluten free breads take a lot longer to toast then their wheat counterparts. Monitor the bread carefully as it will tend to go from completely untoasted to burnt very suddenly.

Prep. Andrea Paterson. 2010

Heirloom. Andrea Paterson. 2010


Bruschetta. Andrea Paterson. 2010.

Dare to Eat a Peach

2010-08-11T21:53:00.001-07:00

dare to eat a peach, originally uploaded by Amaranth Road Studio.

Exerpt from the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
___________________________

Prufrock may shy away from the socially awkward act of eating a peach, but anyone with access to the local peaches that are beginning to pour out of the Okanagan Valley would be insane to follow suit. The peaches pictured above are straight from the market across the street and are bound for a cobbler tomorrow. In the meantime I relish even the thought of their sticky sweetness and the anticipation of the first golden bite. I fully intend to let the juice run down the inside of my arms and I expect to lick my fingers clean in a completely uncivilized manner.

When I was about seven my family drove out into the countryside of southwestern Ontario and bought a basket of peaches at a roadside stand. They were the most perfect and delectable peaches I've ever eaten and not one has ever compared. I am still in search of a peach that might rival the memory of the one from my childhood. I can remember sitting in the backseat of the car dripping peach and not caring a bit. It reminds me how infrequently we eat good quality local produce and how our taste buds are being deprived of this alimentary bliss as we grope along the grocery shelves for another tasteless rock of fruit imported from a million miles away. But at least for the moment British Columbia's markets are bursting at the seams with local bounty--blueberries, cherries, peaches, and green beans. I'm planning a trip to the farmer's market downtown on Saturday morning and will report back on what I find there!

Goodbye Facebook

2010-08-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

Image by Ben Heine (click picture for link to Flickr)

After much soul searching and deliberation I recently posted the following message on my Facebook page:

Dear Facebook,

As much as I wanted to deny it, this just isn't working out. I kept wanting to leave you but your promise of voyeuristic glimpses into the quotidian minutia of other people's lives drew me back like some kind of deranged addict. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that as a networking platform you dole out more time wasting distractions (ahem...Farmville) than meaningful connections with the people I care about. You fashion people's lives into irrelevant tidbits of information (where my friends went for dinner, what concerts they are seeing, what YouTube video they just watched) and so rarely spark real conversations that I am beginning to feel that your value is minimal. I want to keep in touch with people, but not in this constrained way where we are all defined by how many "friends" we have, what our favourite movies are, and how many photos we're tagged in. I'm craving moments of interaction where people give more than vague allusions to momentous occasions in their lives ("I can't believe that you just did that to me!", "I'm so insanely happy right now," "If only things had turned out differently"). How can I celebrate or sympathize with the people in my life if I don't even know what they're angry, happy, disappointed about?

I think that keeping in touch is fundamentally something tactile--the word "touch" suggests some form of literal interaction with other human beings--and Facebook, I think you create more chasms than bridges between users. Maybe it's working for some people, but I don't think we're on the same page. If you are one of the few who actually use the magic that is the postal system send me an email and I'd be happy to send you a mailing address. I will leave this message up until tonight and then pull the plug.

Keep in touch!

This was a harder thing to do than one might imagine. I signed up for a Facebook account 3 years ago so it's strange to find how entrenched it has become. Clearly my life was fine without it and I began to wonder if using it had enhanced my personal relationships in any way. I had to admit that the answer was no--in fact it may have decreased the quality in that incidences of people sending an email, calling, or *gasp* writing a letter to see what I'm up to have declined because they can surreptitiously stalk my Facebook page, thus avoiding any need to contact me directly.

And yet the decision to delete my Facebook account came with odd levels of anxiety. I was worried that I might lose touch with someone important or miss out on some massive event. But really, if people are important I'm going to find other ways to keep in touch and if an event is truly going to impact my life I'll hear about it some other way.

When I finally hit the "delete account" button I had to type in one of those security words--you know the randomly generated words that you have to enter in order to prove you're a real person? Well the two words that came up were SURLIER DIVORCE. Huh. How strangely apt. But I'm not running back to that destructive relationship.

I think it's time to cut back on the online junk food. Just like food diets, media diets can either nourish you or negatively impact your mental health and I think Facebook might be the media equivalent of high fructose corn syrup--it's this highly distilled, highly processed product masquerading as the real, organic thing that spawned it. Corn becomes unrecognizable in corn syrup and friendship becomes unrecognizable on Facebook. In a strange instance of irony Facebook made me faceless, obscured me more than it exposed me, and buried me under scores of contrived social interactions. Having 200 "friends" on Facebook is no replacement for friends that physically populate your life. I want to start paying more attention to those relationships. I want to write more letters and actually stick a stamp on them and put them in the mail. I want to make time for more phone calls to my family and friends back in Ontario. I want to get together regularly with the friends I have here in Vancouver and help to strengthen the relationships we've been building over the past four years. Facebook won't help me do any of those things so I'm swearing it off. Cold turkey. And I'm already feeling just a little bit shaky, but if my previous experience giving up eggs, dairy, and gluten are any indication once I get over the detox phase I'm going to feel far better. Now, does anyone know where I can get a pen pal?

Being Somebody

2010-08-09T11:23:00.001-07:00

30 Days of Life Support - Isolation - I Walk a Lonesome Path, originally uploaded by Jeniee.

TORONTO (Reuters) - A woman in the Toronto area has admitted to faking cancer, running a bogus charity and collecting thousands of dollars from people who thought she was dying, a Toronto newspaper reported.

Ashley Anne Kirilow, 23, shaved her head and eyebrows, plucked her eyelashes, and starved herself to look like she was going through chemotherapy treatments, the report in the Toronto Star said.

She befriended different local groups and recruited volunteers to help her organize events and benefit concerts in her own honor, and even convinced a cancer awareness organization -- Skate4Cancer -- to fly her to Disney World to fulfill what she said was a dying wish. All told, she raised C$20,000 ($19,400), volunteers said.

Her charity 'Change' for Cure, was never registered with tax authorities. On its Facebook page, which has over 4,000 members, she said it was "started October 2009 one very late night while I was sick in bed after my 'Chemo Day.'" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=142167031235)

The Star said Kirilow contacted the paper, saying she was sorry for what she had done.

"I was trying to be noticed. I was trying to get my family back together. I didn't want to feel like I'm nothing anymore. It went wrong, it spread like crazy, and then it seemed like the whole world knew," the paper quoted her as saying.

(Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Frank McGurty)

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100806/canada/canada_us_cancer_fraud_1

It would be easy to dismiss Ashley Kirilow’s story as the actions of a deranged person committing a horrible act of fraud--and certainly she should be punished for her abuse of public trust and goodwill, but I have to wonder if her desperate bid for attention says something about the world we are living in, and the preponderance of social media in particular. As the internet becomes more and more entrenched into our daily lives we have become, as a culture, people who feel an incessant drive to broadcast ourselves whether it is through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or countless other social networking sites. While these sites are not inherently bad there are certainly a number of negative side effects that result from being able to access so many minute details of peoples’ lives, pursuits, and accomplishments. One of these side effects is anonymity combined with a crushing of individual uniqueness. A perusal of the internet reveals that nearly everything has been done before so in order to stand out from the crowd individuals are compelled to do more extreme, extraordinary, or innovative things than the next person. For example, my husband and I, in a moment of inspiration, decided that it would be hilarious to do a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” on the ukulele. I got myself some sunglasses the size of my head. My husband learned the chords and arranged the song for ukulele. I spent lots of time memorizing the lyrics. We put together a presentation that we were positive was completely unique and felt that we should share it with the world. But our assumption that we had done something new was destroyed after a quick search on YouTube revealed at least three videos of people performing renditions of Paparazzi on the ukulele. At that point it didn’t matter if our version was more nuanced, better rehearsed, or more polished. It had been done before and, therefore, no one would care. We were a bit dejected and didn’t bother recording the song.

The thing is that without the ubiquity of social media we could have been unique--unique within the confines of our limited social reach. It’s quite possible that no one in Vancouver has ever done a version of Paparazzi on ukulele. Maybe not even anyone in British Columbia. Maybe we are the first people in all of Canada to have the idea and actually execute it. Without the dampening effect of YouTube we could have seen ourselves as musical innovators and gained the satisfaction that comes from doing something new. We would have fulfilled the desire to create and invent and been happy with our amusing rendition of a pop hit. The problem is that social media shrink the world so we are suddenly in direct competition not just with our local communities but with people all over the world. Suddenly it’s near to impossible to distinguish yourself from the crowd and we languish into obscurity, our greatest accomplishments become yesterday’s news, and we suffer from the sense that nothing we do will be new or exciting. Feelings of invisibility frequently come hand in hand with a sense of despondency--it doesn’t matter what we do because no one is going to notice, no one is going to cheer us on.

So perhaps Ms. Kirilow is an extreme example of what such obscurity might do to someone and the lengths people must go to to be noticed, cared about, and loved. Our overstimulated minds only have attention for extraordinary examples of human ability and achievement and due to the overload of information available to us our threshold for the extraordinary is going up every day. Where we might once have been impressed by a man in our neighbourhood who could play the guitar beautifully and write lovely songs, now we’re not impressed by anything but the world’s greatest guitar virtuosos who perform technically in ways that seem impossible to achieve. Similarly we are not moved by the regular, everyday plights of people struggling through their daily lives. We are only moved to action by people who exhibit extreme will and fortitude in the face of devastating life circumstances. Major illnesses will get people noticed--particularly if the sufferers show incredible strength of character and a determination to beat the odds.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t admire those who model great strength in some way or great talent, but as a society we have become blind to the strength and talent that surrounds us in our immediate circles of family and friends. Chances are that our friends can’t compete with “that thing on YouTube that got 2 million views” and so we brush off their accomplishments and ignore their inherent uniqueness in favour of watching some stranger pull off an amazing feat of some kind. I don’t think what Ms. Kirilow did was right, but I do sympathize with her sense of desperation, her desire to be noticed, and her thwarted need to be cared for. We all need to be loved, appreciated, and applauded sometimes. We shouldn’t have to fake a serious illness and undermine the struggles of those who are truly suffering from such illnesses in order to receive those things. We might all be happier if we shut off YouTube for awhile and took a good look at the people that are in the same room as us, the same neighbourhood, even the same city. I think we would find a lot to celebrate in that limited space. Maybe the world doesn’t care about the rendition of Paparazzi that my husband and I rehearsed, but it could be that our family and friends will get a kick out of it, and maybe that’s all that really matters.

The Cabin

2010-08-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

Note: I didn't have my camera with me to document my following post so I'm using other people's images from Flickr. Enjoy!

As it turns out there are multiple ways to define a cabin--though the Oxford English Dictionary seems fairly certain about what a cabin is, defining it as:

A permanent human habitation of rude construction. Applied especially to the mud or turf-built hovels of slaves or impoverished peasantry, as distinguished from the more comfortable ‘cottage’ of working men, or from the ‘hut’ of the savage, or temporary ‘hut’ of travellers, explorers, etc.

I probably should have read the OED definition before setting out on a recent excursion to a friend’s “cabin” because it seems that I was mixing up “cabin” and “cottage” in my mind, or that “cabin” has expanded in general usage to include a wide variety of accommodations from tiny but complete houses overlooking the water to log constructions set deep in wild woods. My own experience with “cabins” has been a family cabin in Point Roberts that is probably nicer than any house I can ever hope to buy in Vancouver and has every amenity you could reasonably want and a friend’s cabin on Bowen Island that was definitely nicer than any house I can ever hope to buy in Vancouver and had a huge deck overlooking the ocean. So when M. said that a friend had invited us out for a weekend rafting trip at his “cabin” in Lytton my brain searched for examples of cabins, came up with the two I’ve been to, and said “Oh Yay. A cabin. This will be relaxing and lovely and luxurious in a rustic and quaint way.” I packed shampoo.

Looking back on it there were clues that my own version of “cabin” was not going to jive with the actual place we were going. There were some emails forwarded to me that included notes about bringing bottled water and coolers. I didn’t think much of it though. I assumed that the water wasn’t potable and that perhaps the fridge was too small to accommodate all of the beer people were bringing so extra coolers would be required.

So when we pulled off the main road, drove through some seriously tall, dried out grass, and pulled up outside what appeared to be an abandoned hunting lodge I was a bit confused. Maybe those are the sheds I thought. But no. The ramshackle buildings were in fact the cabins--wood construction covered in green tin, with a deck so weathered and rickety that I was unsure it would hold weight. In fact, one of the slats popped off when someone stepped on it and it had to be replaced. I began to sense that I had been misinformed somehow. Or perhaps not misinformed, because no one directly told me anything, but rather not informed at all. I don’t have any particular problem with roughing it. I’ve done week long canoe trips where we had to dig holes to pee in. I’ve camped in torrential downpours and gale force winds. I’ve stayed in hostels where you’re afraid to touch the mattresses. I’m a pretty good sport when it comes to roughing it, but I like to know what I’m getting into ahead of time. So I don’t bring shampoo with the intention of actually using it.

After my first trip over to the outhouse to check out the “facilities” (a hole cut in some plywood with an old toilet seat sitting on top of it) I was starting to succumb to the hilarity of the situation. There are moments when things are just so absurd that you have no choice but to laugh at your own plight. I did give M. a hard time for not telling me. I don’t know. I would think that when you take your new wife on a trip to a place that you’ve been before but she hasn’t you might mention things like “Oh by the way, there’s no plumbing, electricity, or heat of any kind at the place that we’re going. Just so you know. So, like, don’t bother bringing shampoo or soap or any personal hygiene products really. For real--this place is pretty rustic so don’t expect a bed or anything.” M. tried to pin the misconception on me by saying that I should have more accurately decoded the clues in the email (i.e. the coolers and instruction to bring water), but I don’t think that argument holds water.

But after all was said and done and I got over my fear of using the outhouse and I set up my sleeping bag on an ancient foam mattress it was actually a great weekend. There was a fire ban due to the threat of forest fires, so we had some logs with red cellophane sticking out of them and a flashing LED light to create an illusion of flickering. M. and I played some music and on Saturday we went white water rafting on the Thompson River on Sunday. The ten of us that had gathered at the cabins sat out on the deck (that somehow managed to hold us up) in the evenings and bundled up against the evening cold. We saw two bears over the weekend--one making its way along a rather steep cliff so that I wondered at its agility and lumbering grace. We kept our eyes peeled for rattlesnakes in the tall, dry grass and looked for shooting stars and satellites in the night sky. We listened to distant peels of thunder and were dazzled by flashes of lightning though we never got a full fledged storm. On the way home M. and I stopped at a farmer’s market to stock up on local produce--blueberries, raspberries, buckwheat honey almost as dark as molasses, tomatoes, yellow zucchini, and orange peppers. It felt good to move at a slower pace for the weekend and I suppose I can forgive M. for his incredible omission of cabin related data. I will add this to my cumulative definition of what “cabin” might mean.

2010-07-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

M. and I received a number of surprise gifts for our wedding--all of them thoughtful, beautiful, and often tied to particular places so that our living room now contains in every corner a reminder of the love and care of far-flung friends and relatives. It’s a lovely feeling to wrap myself in the mohair blanket from New Zealand, look at a fantastic print by an artist friend residing in San Francisco and headed soon for Germany, admire the stunning pottery from Powell River, and a walnut salad bowl from Oregon. We received a bird carved out of willow from Scotland as well as a traditional silver quaiche (drinking vessel) that we used in our marriage ceremony. Our walls will soon be graced by a Thunderbird print made by a First Nations artist whom I met during my time at Green College, our cupboards full of mugs in vintage designs from the Royal Albert Museum collection, and our table set with a unique bowl from Vietnam. All the gifts that we received act now not just as utilitarian objects, though many of them are, but also as reminders of their givers, the many people in our lives who have given far more than wedding presents, who have given their love, and kindness, and unwavering support.

But perhaps the most unexpected and incredible gift came through the creative and organizational genius of my maid of honour, Ms. Mika, who in the midst of writing and defending her Masters thesis managed to collaborate with 52 of our friends and relatives to put together a wedding quilt. She presented the quilt at the reception and I was shocked into an inability to express myself (not an easy feat!). Mika had sent instructions to everyone we know requesting that participants send her a fat quarter in a burgundy or sage green colour scheme (our wedding colours) along with any messages they might like to relay. In the end she received 52 submissions that were stunning in their thoughtfulness and beauty. There were hand embroidered squares, monograms and appliques, fabric from my old bedroom curtains, fabric from a sewing project M. did in grade school, fabric from all over the world, a friend’s first quilting attempt (and an amazing result too!), a square inspired by a sweater I recently finished knitting...and the letters were equally beautiful speaking of well wishes and history and love.

Mika put together a scrap book to accompany the quilt. It contains the letters from the contributors as well as photographs of them holding their squares. When I finally had a chance to take a good look at the book and the quilt about two days after the wedding I was moved to tears of joy as I ran my fingers over all the fabric, read the messages, wrapped myself in a sense of well being. In a small piece of serendipitous magic there is a picture of my Baba and Gido holding their quilt square. The picture is the last one ever taken of Gido before he died. In fact, he went into the hospital that very afternoon and never went back home. And that perhaps is the most precious of all gifts--this final message of love from a man who is gone, yet managed to be a part of the wedding celebration in an incredible way.

I have no way to appropriately thank Mika and the countless others who were involved in this project. I can only say that I have been deeply touched by the generosity and enthusiasm you all demonstrated. My brother was particularly funny in his description of going fabric shopping, something far outside his range of expertise. As I flipped through the scrap book I laughed out loud, I cried copious tears of nostalgia and happiness, I ran the gamut of emotions and emerged from the whole experience feeling clear and deeply loved. It is a gift so generous, so perfect, that I fear I will never be able to reciprocate, but I can give my gratitude for having such immeasurably wonderful family and friends and a quilt that M. and I will treasure for the rest of our lives together.

On Marriage

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?" And he answered saying: You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Wedding Sneak Preview

2010-07-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

I'm very likely going to have a lot of things to say about my wedding to M. that took place on July 3, but for now here's a sneak preview--we performed a version of Michael Bolton's "I Said I Loved You But I Lied" with the band Malibu and the extraordinary interpretive dancing of my wonderful maid of honour.

I can see the finish line...

2010-06-17T11:36:00.001-07:00

dorminhoco, originally uploaded by @mands.

I've been feeling a bit like this these days. Sort of like a marathon runner that didn't bother to train. Feeling like any solid surface is a good place to lie down and take a nap--Hey! That linoleum looks pretty comfortable. The coolness will feel good...I could just lie down for a second. Maybe close my eyes just for a minute or two.

I have come to a conclusion. Weddings are exhausting. Exciting, wonderful, challenging...and exhausting. It's like a test. If you and your fiance can live through a year long engagement without maiming each other either physically or psychologically then you are officially qualified to live together for the rest of your lives. M. and I have 16 days to go and it looks like we're going to pass the test...just barely. It's the final sprint and like most races those last few kilometers/hours/days can be the hardest.

We recently discovered the special kind of torture that is a seating arrangement. I'm telling you--trying to seat 130 people in a favourable arrangement in groups of 8 where everyone will like everyone else and have a rip-roaring good time is more challenging than you would think. On the surface of things you think--my family and friends are all amazing, wonderful people and this is going to be super easy. Part A may be true, but part B is an illusion only held by those who have never planned a wedding before. Because half way into your seating plan you realize that due to the 8 person table seating restraint you don't have anywhere left to seat your grandma and she's going to have to be at the table with your old high-school friends because it's the only one left with a space and you realize that perhaps they aren't going to have an awful lot in common unless your grandma has a secret history of participating in drinking games and a particular fondness for the F-word. And suddenly it dawns on you that seating arrangements are actually a Rubik's cube in disguise and that the 8 person table limit creates a slurry of unfortunate guest pairings. And just like a Rubik's cube when you finally think you have it all solved and everything is perfect, you give it a once over and you notice that one, terrible, red cube that is not in the right place and a scream rises to your throat because you realize that you're going to have to change EVERYTHING else in order to get that red cube (aka your weird Uncle Willy) in a place where no one will be offended by his off colour jokes and tendency to play footsies with any girls sitting at the table. M. and I tempered our frustration by drinking double screwdrivers. This seemed to help. It made it funny to think about making up the wackiest table arrangements possible.

But in the end, everything worked out. Rubik's cube solved! I think we should get some sort of certificate for this. Or perhaps it should become a televised sport like Poker and gaming competitions. I think there might be a market for Ultimate Seating Chart Creation. It could be hosted by Jerry Springer or maybe Simon Cowell and will definitely involve throwing chairs.

Nelson Bird

2010-06-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

Every morning I am cruelly mocked. It's been happening for well over a month now. At the inhumane hour of 5:30 am every single morning I am wrenched from sleep and find myself awake and confused. Then I hear it. A very distinct piercing laugh that sounds exactly like the sound Nelson from The Simpsons makes when someone finds themselves in an unfortunate situation. Over and over I hear a very loud and very obnoxious HA ha! I have to put ear plugs in to get back to sleep and I never sleep properly after that with the mocking laughter ringing in my head: HA ha--I woke you up. HA ha--you can't get back to sleep. HA ha--you're going to be tired all day. HA ha--and I'm going to do this to you tomorrow and the next day and the next day until you go completely nuts and have to be sent to an institution and then I'll follow you there and mock you from outside your padded room. HA ha....

I would have done something about this horrific mocking a long time ago but the perpetrator is actually a bird and the logical part of my mind that hasn't been clouded by the incessant HA ha knows that there's not really anything I can do to get a bird outside my window to stop chirping--at least not anything I wouldn't feel guilty about later. And really, it isn't the bird's fault that it sounds like Nelson. M. and I considered building a sling shot and scaring it away by flinging marbles or something at it, but the fact of the matter is that we had no idea what kind of bird it was, what it looked like, or where it was even located. So for weeks I have been woken up every morning to the grating song of the world's most annoying bird.

While I couldn't do anything about the noise I really wanted to know what the bird was. I wanted to put a face to the sound. I wanted to be able to vividly picture the instrument of my torture. But it's hard to look up a bird when all you know about it is that it sounds like Nelson from the Simpsons.

Just Google "Nelson Bird" and see what comes up, M. joked. So I did, just for fun, and (unbelievable as it is) I found THIS on the Urban Dictionary site:

The Nelson Bird

Alternate name for the black-capped chickadee. Named after Nelson Muntz, the bully on the Simpsons with the lackadasical and mocking laugh: "Ha-ha." The black-capped chickadee has two songs, the familiar 'chick-a-dee-dee-dee!' and a song that sounds like Nelson's 'Ha-ha." laugh. Listen here:

http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/birdsong.php?id=12

I was astonished. And was later able to corroborate the evidence that the bird disturbing my sleep was in fact a Black-Capped Chickadee. I was walking outside when I heard the distinct laugh very close by. I scanned the nearby trees and found the source. A bird so small that it seemed impossible that it was producing such a racket. I watched its beak open and close while the HA ha emerged, but still wasn't convinced until it moved to another tree and the sound went with it.

So I know who it is that mocks me each morning. There's still nothing I can do about it but at least now I can direct my annoyance at the correct bird and not direct angst at any innocents.

Black-Capped Chickadee

Photographer Unknown

Burnt Out

2010-06-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

Burnt Out

Andrea. 2010

I had a small bike accident. Anyone who knows me well won't be particularly surprised. Bike accidents and I are very familiar with each other. In fact, I get the sense that bicycles have something against me. I'm not sure what it is. Thankfully this was not a bad accident on the injury scale, but it gets top points on the "that was horribly embarrassing" scale.

It happened like this: I've been itching to cycle to work more but disgusting Vancouver weather has been forcing me to take the bus. Today I was promised a clear, rain-free day by the people over at Environment Canada so I took my chances and cycled in to work. There was a section of my regular route that was blocked off due to a fallen tree being cleaned up by a work crew. A woman in a bright orange jumper was holding up a stop sign. So I did the logical thing and stopped. It was all going well. My bicycle came to a halt, I unclipped my feet from the pedals, and then asked if I would be able to get through using the sidewalk. The woman said that would be fine but that I should use the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Another cyclist had pulled up behind me and I turned my wheel to the left in order to cross the street. It was at this seemingly innocent moment that the accident occurred. As I turned my wheel my bike listed to the side, then the weight of my fairly heavy panniers combined with the weight of the bike took me down. I fell right over into the road! I actually fell pretty hard. I bruised my left hand breaking my fall and scraped up my knee (though bizarrely enough didn't rip my Lululemon pants--apparently they're tougher than my skin). I hadn't even been moving! I was standing up one minute and lying on the road the next with nothing in between that could account for my suddenly prone position. The woman with the stop sign and the other cyclist stared at me. The stop sign woman asked if I was okay. I popped up off the road, brushed myself off, claimed to be fine, and managed to cycle the rest of the way to work without incident if you don't count the nasty stinging sensation in my knee.

And as I was cycling along carefully thinking about the ridiculousness of my fall it occurred to me that the event is a perfect metaphor for my life in this present moment. Things have been extraordinarily crazy in my small world. Between the upcoming wedding that is now under a month away, the death of my grandfather, a few minor health concerns, and a number of other stressful things going on in my personal life I have come up to the edge of my breaking point. The only thing keeping me from crumbling is momentum. I fear that if I stop the weight of it all will be too much and I'll simply fall over like I did today in the middle of 49th avenue. The only comforting thing about it all is that when I found myself on the pavement this morning staring into the concerned faces of two total strangers I did manage to get up and I got to work and got through my day and will presumably keep on going. Other than finding a thin layer of my knee adhered to the inside of my cycling pants I'm not injured; a bit humiliated, but not truly hurt. And maybe it's a sign that I'm not going to crumble after all. Perhaps the bumps, bruises, and scrapes doled out by life these past months are not quite as life threatening as I've imagined.

In Memory of Gidu

2010-05-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

The Harvest

Andrea. 2009

My Grandfather (Gidu in Ukrainian) passed away very early last Sunday after a long illness. I wrote this eulogy as I was flying home from Vancouver:

My memories of Gidu always have been and always will be centred on earth and on the bounty brought forth from it. When I see Gidu in my mind's eye he is frequently in his garden nurturing giant tomatoes, digging in dark soil. I see him in the kitchen biting into the sleek red skin of one of these tomatoes and eating it whole, like an apple, sprinkled with salt. I have been lucky enough to never know hunger but for Gidu, who has known what it is to lack for life's basic necessities, it makes sense that his love has always been tied to the vegetables he has grown and silent toiling in the hot summer sun.

Contained in the Mason jars lining Baba and Gidu's store room are not just pickles, apple sauce, tomato sauce, and fruit cocktail, but a legacy of tradition, care, and loving preparation of food for their family. As so many of us know, Gidu's pasta sauce is not just a careful mixture of tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spices but a testament to everything he stood for—hard work, patience, and living as sustainably as possible off the products of his own labour.

There came a time when Gidu announced the production of his last batch of tomato sauce. The canning process was too gruelling and he had to admit that he could no longer do it. My mother was in possession of one of these final jars and said to me that she was afraid to finish eating it. Her father was so tied to that jar and the labour that produced its contents that to finish it might be to lose him. If the pasta sauce remained the Gidu would be alive as well. But she did eat it, because who can resist Gidu's tomato sauce? The last jars dwindled but we all had the privilege of knowing what it is to be nourished by food and love all combined in the confines of a single glass jar.

And what I am left with now are vignettes where Gidu is present and I am fed and cared for and loved:

The world's largest blueberry bursting on my tongue at the “pick-your-own” blueberry farm that Baba and Gidu took the grandchildren to each year;

The bliss of perogies fresh from the pot and covered in fried onions;

Gidu shirtless and strong with the sun warming his back as he works to produce a small backyard harvest. Later there will be ham and tomato sandwiches, a game of Euchre that Gidu will win, and much laughter.

We grandchildren have been so lucky to have had this man in our lives this long, to sit with us at the table sharing stories and hopes and dreams. With a good meal spread before us the room is infused with the quiet serenity that comes from knowing you are loved. These are gifts that I can carry on from here for the rest of my life.

Shadowland

2010-05-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

Shadowland

Andrea.2010

I took another Polaroid. I couldn't help it. It's like having a giant bag of cookies lying around and trying not to eat one. This one took a fair bit of staging. My apartment is absolutely crammed with stuff so it was surprisingly difficult to set up a shot that didn't have all sorts of distractions in it. In an attempt to avoid overexposure I shut the picture up in my violin case as soon as I grabbed it from the camera and then left it for a full 10 minutes. That seemed to successfully produce darker, reddish tones that I quite like.

In addition to photography I wanted to share this exerpt from Susan Holbrook's newest book of poems Joy is So Exhausting

Editing the Erotica Issue
Susan Holbrook

Crocuses glistened. Sparrows throbbed.
………..Would he approve
………..Of her nipples of mauve?
And that was what had first attracted him, her canvas flaps.
A father of four, he is nevertheless kittenish.
Her skirt had a stuffed look, which could only mean she was wearing ruffled panties.
Oh nutritious mound of sprouts.
Richard and Regina had been friends for a long time.
Dear editors: When I saw you were doing an erotica issue, I thought, woody-licious!
And in the velour pantsuit of evening, even the sandflies laughed to see their joy.
Richard throbbed. Regina glistened.
In the land of Zamore, mailmen had a dual function.
“Oh, excuse me, I thought everyone was gone for the night,” she says, foaming at the
…..ears.
Her heart throbbed, and the surgeon saw that it was glistening in there.
“Quickly! More crumpled wet sheets!”
He carries me upstairs under one arm, like a chicken.
…………Left a hickie as big as a toonie,
…………Monday acted like he never knew me.
Dear editors: I have been waiting years to share my expertise in this very special field
…..of writing.
Are you even glistening? I’m throbbing to you.
Oranges, all over.

Polaroid Fever

2010-05-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

New Love

Andrea. 2010

I have taken my first Polaroid image and it was the biggest photographic adrenaline rush ever. For someone who is used to nonchalantly snapping digital images taking a Polaroid was a whole new world. Let's begin with the fact that the film is insanely expensive and hard to get. After the Impossible Project started manufacturing Polaroid film again all the people out there with Polaroid cameras went a little wrangy. They either sold their cameras for a mint or started hoarding the rare, limited edition film like they had just struck oil. The Impossible Project is currently sold out of just about everything, but I did manage to find some PX-100 Silvershade film at a local camera shop where I bought three boxes instead of the one I was planning on purchasing because I succumbed to scarcity panic. The salesperson informed me that they only had a few boxes left and with the Impossible Project being out of stock the possibility of more film in the near future was low and my fear of being left out in the Polaroid cold induced me to purchase $92 worth of film. Which gets me a whopping 24 exposures for a per image price of $3.83! Not only that, but the anxiety produced by Polaroid film shortages was so great that I acutally put my name on a waiting list to get a few boxes of the colour film that is supposed to arrive in the next few weeks. I felt as if I had just purchased illicit drugs. My heart was pounding as I left the store with three small white boxes containing 8 exposures each and my rather incredible receipt.

I sat myself down on a bench because I couldn't wait to load the film and carefully opened the box. My mouth was dry as I considered the possibility that this Polaroid camera I purchased on eBay might not even be functional. The seller claimed it was film tested and since I'm a trusting sort of person I believed him, but you just never know what you're going to get when there is absolutely no way for you to inspect the item before purchase. I snapped in the film cartridge and my camera promptly spit out the following message:

A Message from My Camera

Andrea. 2010

I'm not really sure what that means but I was charmed. My camera wanted me to be enigmatic, mysterious, impossible to pin down, unwedded to any specific identity, flexible, and curious. I thought, "yes, that sounds good, I will be a question mark." Then my philosophical moment dissipated with the mounting fear and excitement produced by my fully loaded Polaroid camera sitting on the bench beside me. It was time to take a picture and I had performance anxiety. There were a lot of things to consider.

I had been warned about the diva-like nature of PX-100 film. It doesn't like light so as soon as it emerges from the camera you're supposed to put it somewhere dark or at the very least place it face down. It doesn't like extreme heat or cold, preferring a moderate 62-75 degrees. So if it's hot outside you should bring it somewhere cool to develop and if it's cold you should put it in your pocket. You're not supposed to touch the surface as it develops and you have to wait about 5 minutes for it to finish becoming an image. I really wasn't sure what the temperature outside was but I was guessing around 50 degrees. I figured I would put the picture in my pocket for good measure but worried that my pocket might be a bit too warm. Alas, with no other options I strategized that my pocket was my best bet. I found myself a photographic subject, a very quaint house across the street from my vantage point. I debated the merits of the house to decide if it was actually worth of a $4.00 picture. It had doll-house-like shingles, sweet white curtains on the windows, a laburnum tree hanging over the left side of the room and another large tree to the right of the lawn. I thought it would lend itself well to the vintage sepia tones of the PX-100 film. So feeling confident about my subject matter I raised the camera to my eye and peered through the slightly dusty viewfinder. I let my finger hang over the shutter release. My mouth was dry and I was feeling a little sweaty. I depressed the ominous red button. Heard a click, a whizzzz, a click and the picture was spit out of the camera.

AHHH! I wasn't ready! I was expecting a lag time between the exposure and the emergence of the picture. Frazzled I grabbed it. Shoved it in my pocket as quickly as I could. Realized that it was a bit large for my pocket and one corner was hanging out. Began to freak out about light leaks and covered my pocket with my hand to try to reduce the possibility of sunlight touching my print. So picture this--I'm standing on the sidewalk holding a Polaroid camera in one hand and using my other to press my right pocket closed. There's a vintage leather camera bag hanging from my neck. I'm trying very hard not to move because I'm afraid I'll bend, crinkle, or otherwise marr the developing image in my pocket. I'm desperately fighting the urge to look at the picture because the need to know what it looks like is monopolizing my entire mind and I'm starting to feel giddy with dread and anticipation. I wait a full 7 minutes to make sure that thing is developed. And then...the moment of truth!

I pulled the picture out of my pocket and Voila!

House of Dreams

Andrea. 2010

I was in love. The image wasn't perfect. It wasn't nearly as good as many of the Polaroids I've seen recently on Flickr (it's Polaroid week over there and people are doing some amazing things!), but there was something about it that I found incredible. The completely modern scene before me had been magically transformed into something that spoke of bygone years. The image was full of blurred and hazy mystery. Details were reduced to smears of light and I found the entire thing absolutely marvellous. And I was hooked. And I wanted to do the whole thing again right away. But with much effort I restrained myself. At $4.00 a shot I can't afford to be taking Polaroids willy-nilly. I'm going to have to save them for special occasions so I can stretch out the supply and keep M. from leaving me because I'm spending our grocery money on instant film. To comfort myself I'll allow myself to take regular film pictures on the old Minolta I've borrowed from M.'s parents. That film is much cheaper to purchase and develop but still presents the excitement of not quite knowing what you're going to get when you're done.

And a side note--I don't have a scanner so I had to take a digital photograph of my Polaroid in order to post it online. From what I can tell in the Polaroid photography community this is a sin punishable by ex-communication. The Polaroid pool on Flickr warns that anyone posting such images will have their pictures deleted from the site. This has something to do with maintaining authenticity. I'm not quite sure how a scan is fundamentally different (and less digital) than a digital photograph, but alas this means I can't submit my photo to the pool. Hopefully I can be forgiven for posting it here!

The Pursuit of Free

2010-05-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

Daffodilly

Andrea 2010

On Sunday I dragged myself out of bed at 6:15 am, put a liter of tea in a Thermos, grabbed six breakfast cookies freshly baked on Saturday night, and got on a bus headed for the "Got Craft" fair on Commercial Drive. The fair didn't start until 10 am but a bag of free stuff from the vendors had been promised to the first 30 people in line and it appears that the possibility of free stuff causes temporary insanity in the potential recipients of said free stuff, causing them to engage in bizarre behaviour. I was meeting a friend at the craft venue for 8 am. We assumed 2 hours would be more than enough time to claim our prize and we came prepared. I brought knitting as well as food, my friend brought a book and piles of fruit. We were going to settle in for the long haul. We were going to sit there cold and uncomfortable for two full hours in order to lay our hands on a bag of god-knows-what. The mystery of the bag's contents may have been part of the allure. The thought that something truly amazing might be in that bag and you won't get a chance to know unless you get up at the crack of dawn turns out to be a powerful motivator.

So I'm on the bus headed for the Craft fair with my Thermos snug in my back-pack and the sweater I'm knitting for M. curled up alongside it. And I'm dreaming about all the amazing things that might be in the swag bag that I'm quite certain I'm going to obtain with my ambitious 6:15 am start time. In my mind there is something in that bag so completely inspiring that it might just change the course of my entire day, maybe week, maybe my life. At the very least I'm sure that whatever is in there will fill me with delight and make my early morning trek worth it.

As I finally approached the venue I became jittery. Would I be early enough? Surely there weren't 30 other people in Vancouver as keen as I was to find out what was in those bags. There was no one ouside when I arrived and my heart jumped. I was sure that I had made it. I opened the door and found about 10 people standing at the bottom of a long set of stairs. Okay--not too many people yet, I was probably in luck! But it suddenly became horribly clear that the line of people went all the way up the stairs and that the place was packed with eager crafters who had somehow managed to arrive even earlier than my extravagant 7:45 am. My friend, seeing the line growing in a video online, had rushed over and managed to sneak into 29th place, securing a bag for herself. There had been an actual sprint for the 30th place, she reported. And I hadn't even been close. I felt crushed. As absolutely stupid as it is I was fighting the urge to cry. I stood there with my knitting and my tea and my cookies baked especially for the occasion and felt thoroughly defeated. I now faced a 2 hour wait on a cold staircase without the potential of anything to reward me for my patience. My friend, a gracious, kind, and sympathetic soul, agreed to split the contents of her bag with me and I was somewhat appeased by the fact that things were not entirely in vain. And I also got a rare opportunity to observe a whole group of people who had decided to forgo sleep in order to crack into a mystery swag bag.

I quickly concluded that I had underestimated the hard-core nature of the crafters assembled. A brief look around confirmed that I never had a chance against the die-hards assembled in the chilly, damp hallway of the Royal Canadian Legion. Almost everyone was knitting, and we're not talking stockinette scarfs here--people were knitting lace standing up, they were shaping socks on double pointed needles, they were working on projects hanging off size 2 needles. These were dedicated knitters full of energy and determination. One woman was wearing a Sock Summit sweatshirt. The frenzy of knitting was accompanied by an absolute cacaphony of talking, laughing, and despairing cries from people who arrived too late to get a Mystery Bag. People were relating the tales of their rush to the venue as one might relate tales of glory (and destruction) in battle. It was all very epic. I sipped tea from my thermos, ate a few cookies to comfort myself, and snacked on the fresh raspberries my friend had brought along. We chatted, I knitted, she read a book and my fingers slowly seized up in the cold.

My disappointment slowly dissipated and as 10 am drew near I could feel the anticipation buzzing in the room. Finally my friend was handed a lovely tweed bag stuffed full of small packages. We immediately retreated to a corner to empty out the loot like a couple of theives in the night. And there was some good stuff in there, and because of my friend's generosity I got to go home with some of it--a necklace some fabulous magnets, earrings, stationery. We carefully picked through every item marvelling at the best items and tossing less interesting ones back into the bag. The greatest of the excitement over we were able to spend an enjoyable few hours browsing the craft tables, drooling over the sweet knits, needle felted toys, clothes, and accessories. There was a craft table set up where everyone could assemble a pinwheel brooch out of felt, fabric, and buttons. Ultimately I went home happy, though a bit tired and channeled my inspiration into a few hand-made cards in the afternoon.

The craft fair happens again near Christmas. We're busy plotting our strategy for getting free stuff. Clearly we need to reevaluate our dedication to free-stuff procurement. Live and learn.

Sing Your Last

2010-04-23T11:34:00.001-07:00

The Harp Sessions: Caravaggioesque, originally uploaded by eugkyr.

My harp is living out its last days. I was startled to find this, but my friend who plays the harp professionally took one look at it and declared it to be true. Apparently harps have a lifespan of about a decade. The high tension of the strings puts so much pressure on the soundboard that it eventually cracks and sometimes pops right out. This cannot be fixed. There are no precautionary measure that will help. My soundboard is bowed outwards, straining against 700 pounds of pressure from the strings. The chest of this instrument heaves but because of this its voice is more beautiful now than it ever has been. The extra space created within the instrument due to the rounding of the soundboard makes the sound larger. I am deeply sad about the imminent demise of the harp. I thought that I was getting an instrument that I could play forever, but it turns out that harps don't have forever, rather a more finite lifespan. But I can't help bot notice the poetry of its end--the way it reaches its greatest potential in the moments directly preceding its death, the fine line between perfection and obliteration.

"You should just play it until it dies" said my friend. Which is what I intend to do. New harps are prohibitively expensive. It's very likely that when this one goes my budding harp career will succumb to fatal frost. It's hard to justify purchasing such an expensive instrument when your ability to play it is so small and you're uncertain about how much time you will be able to devote to it in the future. If I had known that it only had a few years left when I bought it perhaps I would have made more of the opportunity. But then again, maybe not. A looming end is not always enough to launch people into action and it is inevitable that some opportunities in life will be lost.

But for now, I have a harp. It sits in my living room kept company by my compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, a large music stand, a wall lined with CDs, and a metronome. Its presence is strong. If you play other instruments in the apartment its strings vibrate sympathetically. It is an instrument that speaks its mind. The one time I carried it outside on the way to a music store to see about getting new strings the wind played in the strings and my harp began humming...first quietly and then louder and louder until it was almost a scream. "That's incredible" said a man in his garden as I passed with the harp. "Yes," I said. And it really was--the sound it was creating was a roar. I didn't know a harp could sound like that.

Upon returning from the music store it promptly broke a C string. I get the impression that the harp is a bit of homebody and didn't much appreciate the trip into the world. I don't know how much time it has left. My only option now is to appreciate it as much as I can now. Learn all that I can now. And maybe one day I'll be able to get a new instrument. You just never know.

Polaroid Dreams with Harp Accompaniment

2010-04-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

Bird Speaks. Mixed Media Collage

Andrea. 2010

I do my own thing, and you do your thing,

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful

If not, it can't be helped.

I have this flaw, or perhaps this strength depending on the situation, and it's that I tend to dive into absolutely anything that catches my attention--and my attention is not very exclusive. My interests are so varied that it's difficult to keep track of them and the list of things I have learned or have wanted to learn grows longer all the time. It also leads to some impulsive but frequently exciting purchases, the most recent being a Polaroid SX-70 OneStep camera from the 70s that I found on eBay after being incredibly inspired by Madelyn ,Vivienne, and
Suvarna who recently put together a display of their beautiful Polaroid images here in Vancouver. The camera is in the mail and there will no doubt be updates about my exploits with the finicky art of Polaroid photography. So you see how this happens--there I was enjoying the Polaroid display by these three lovely artists and my brain said in a very convincing voice: "It is imperative that you try this. Just think of the creative possibilities. This is a new chance to create something beautiful." So after deciding that purchasing a used camera and sourcing some film wouldn't be prohibitively expensive (albeit not exactly what one might call cheap) I dove in. Started looking at Polaroid images on Flickr. Started thinking about all the things I could photograph. Started writing essays in my head about the merits of Polaroid and film photography in an age of rampant digital images (I love digital photography, but that doesn't mean other ways of seeing aren't still valuable!). This whole process has happened multiple times. It's why I've tried polymer clay sculpting, it's why I've recently been working on mixed media collage (picture above is my first example), it's why I once acquired an old blender solely for the purpose of making my own paper, it's why I bought an Irish flute made out of PVC pipe while travelling in Ireland, and it's why I recently found myself waist deep in an attempt to learn to play the harp, which is really what I was trying to bring this blog post around to eventually.

My desire to play the harp emerged suddenly when I was about 16 and obsessed with everything that had to do with Ireland. My love for the Emerald Isle has never really left me, and due to a long string of serendipitous events I acquired a 29 string harp that has been a stunning piece of furniture for about three years but hasn't gotten much of my attention otherwise. More convergences occurred and I befriended a wonderful harp player and ended up enrolled in her six week group harp workshop for beginners. And so it is that I have spent the past five weeks trying to learn the harp.

And let me tell you this--It's HARD. No angelic glissandos or twinkling runs of light-filled notes for me. If I manage to play a few arpeggios without causing all the strings to buzz and twang it feels like a huge accomplishment. I don't feel one bit like an angel when I'm playing. The body position and hand positions are so unnatural to me that I feel pretty much like a twisted old troll when I play the harp, with my hands like claws and my shoulders burning with the effort of holding my arms just right. Thankfully my friend is a very patient teacher, and I think that despite my own impression I'm actually making progress--the slow, painful progress that every beginner makes when things are brand new and seem near to impossible. I tell myself that the challenge will make me a better person, will feed the part of my mind that is never satisfied unless I'm learning something completely different from anything I've tried before. I tell myself that it's okay if I'm never a master harp player. It's okay if the only thing I accomplish is the ability to let a few O'Carolan tunes spill out from under my fingertips, because in those few small tunes I can touch a whole musical tradition, participate just for a moment in an unknown culture and know myself better through my brush with the unfamiliar.

Going Macro

2010-04-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

I just recently found an old used Nikon 55mm f/3.5 Macro lens for a mere $150. Seeing as new macro lenses cost somewhere in the region of $850, I was pretty excited about this. There's a small catch though--the lens doesn't work in anything but full manual mode and the meter doesn't work at all with this lens on the camera so you have to guess at exposure. I figured that this annoyance was a fair trade off for getting a cheap, well made macro lens and after all with a digital camera its easy to take a few shots, review them, and change the exposure settings. While a 105 mm macro may have been a better choice (allows more distance between you and your subject which also means its easier to get your entire subject in focus) even used ones were nearly three times the price of the 55mm that I picked up. I've had some opportunity to try it out now and have been happy with my early results, especially considering that manual mode scares me more than Rita MacNeil singing Danny Boy.

Macro photography is like having a whole new set of eyes. It forces new perspective and a new appreciation of tiny details in the world around you. Predominantly I wanted this lens to photograph small needle felting and polymer clay projects--but its potential for opening up all sorts of artistic doors is huge. All of a sudden it's exciting to photograph previously boring objects that are just lying around my apartment. A macro lens makes even the most mundane things new and endlessly interesting and will probably provide hours of amusement for M. as he watches me crawling around our apartment myopically encountering our environment. That's not to say that I'm really any good at this. Photography is challenging. I have huge gaps in my knowledge base (particularly in the area of optics) and when you consider that these days you have to know about composition, camera mechanics, optics, AND digital processing the number of things to learn about can be seemingly endless. That said I'm very much enjoying my photographic explorations. Here are some early macro trials, more to come I'm sure:

Drawn to the Rhythm

Andrea. 2010

Orchid

Andrea. 2010

Last Breath

Andrea. 2010

All Felt All the Time

2010-04-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is a post about felt. I know you're excited. But really, felt is more amazing than you can possibly imagine. My recent investigations into needle felting and machine felting have opened up a whole new world of craft possibilities. It blows my mind that a bit of wool combined with a bit of agitation can create such an incredibly versatile medium for sculpting and the creation of durable, warm fabrics.

After finishing the needle felted owl that I featured on this blog I thought I would give machine felting a go. I finally have pictures of my French Press Knits felted slippers and I have been wearing them all the time. There's something deeply comforting about wearing hand made felted slippers. It feels luxurious and homey all at the same time. I might have to knit about a dozen more pairs so I'll have them in colours to match absolutely anything. Here are my completed slippers, made during the Knitting Olympics:

Felted Slippers. 2010

Image by Andrea

There's lots to be inspired by in the world of felting. I have been absolutely blown away by Dawn Schiller's recent needle felting excursions. She was already an accomplished polymer clay artist when she spontaneously started turning her signature sculpting style into wonderful needle felted pieces. Her most recent is a satyr (pictured here). Take a look at her other sculptures as well on her blog. She's quite amazing!

I'm currently working on a needle felted bird that I'm hoping to add some polymer clay elements to for some mixed media fun. The plan is to finish it this weekend so I may have pictures by Monday. I've also been inspired by various bloggers that I've been following lately to try some mixed media collage, and I completed one this week. So I'll have pictures of that soon as well. I seem to be brimming with creative energy. I think it's the influence of the spring. With so much life springing up around me it's nearly impossible to resist the urge to stretch my own creative abilities.

Graduation Day

2010-04-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

Max Graduates. April 2009.

Original image by my father, edits by me

My dog, Max, just graduated from dog school. My parents took him because he has a few issues with heeling and chasing after other dogs that he's so desperate to play with. Also it's possible that they're suffering from a bit of empty nest syndrome. It seems that Max has become more and more the child of the family and I have no doubt that he loves it. His few flaws aside no one could say that he isn't a wonderful dog. He loves everyone with such loyalty and unwavering forgiveness. If you trip over him, or accidentally crush his tail under your chair he quickly forgets the pain and remembers only that you are the most wonderful thing in the world. As dogs go you really can't ask for better than that.

Mom reports that Max got an A+ in his dog class. But so did every other dog. When one man received his dog's diploma with the glowing grade on it he exclaimed--"oh! what a good dog. I thought you were going to have to go to remedial class!"

Max had a bit of trouble in his dog class with the "leave it" command. He was "leaving it" just fine when a treat was placed in front of him, but a number of times while he was steadfastly obeying the command a puppy snuck in and ate his treat right out from under his nose. Max is not a stupid dog. What he quickly learned was that "leave it" meant that some upstart pup was going to rush in and eat the delectable snack that he was moments away from getting the go-ahead to devour. So Max snapped. He dashed around the classroom and ate every other dog's treat and has not "left it" again. But apparently he made progress in other ways.

So congratulations Max on your graduation. But you're a good dog regardless.

A Funeral for Birds

2010-04-08T15:02:00.001-07:00

Birds, originally uploaded by Milla's Place.

Where do birds go when they die? I don't mean this in a metaphysical sense. I don't want to know if there's a bird heaven or if there is a strange feathered limbo somewhere on a different plane of existence, but it recently occurred to me that the only time you see dead birds or dead animals of any sort really is if they've been hit by a car and are left in an undignified heap on the side of the road. So where do birds go when they die of natural causes? I am wondering because as I was walking to the bus stop yesterday I saw a pigeon dead on the ground underneath a newly budding tree. It was lying with its eyes closed, without a mark on its body, a tree branch gently resting across its chest. It was distinctly funereal--the branch like a cross on its breast, the leaves like the pin-tuck satin of a coffin. I had those thoughts that you're supposed to have when you encounter the dead: "Oh, he looks so natural," "Oh, I believe he had a good long life. It was his time." And as I was contemplating the small animal body before me I realized that never before in my life had I seen a dead bird, or a dead squirrel, or any other sort of dead urban animal that hadn't been mercilessly squashed, broken, torn apart by predators, or otherwise sustained an injury that caused its death. So I have to ask, where do birds go when they die of old age? Why don't we ever see them? Why don't we see the aged birds who are having a bit of trouble flying, who are slowing down, turning grey, living out their final days pecking restlessly at the ground for the worms that used to satisfy them and now seem futile? Perhaps like us they are ashamed of their bodies that break down and can no longer soar with the freedom of fledglings. Perhaps like us they seek to hide the cumulative degradation of their physical selves. Perhaps like us they begin a process of moving back the other way--maybe they find an old abandoned nest and pull themselves into the circle of twigs, leaves, mud of ages, imagine themselves a chick safe in the brittle shell of a spotted egg, close their eyes and sleep eternally.

Screwing Up x 2

2010-04-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

Painted Daisies

By Andrea

M. and I have been busy since the engagement. Really busy. And while almost everything that has happened in the last 8 months has been wonderful and exciting, juggling so many balls at once seems to have caught up to us both, proving that maybe not everything is completely under control. And so we have been forced to face our own fallibility, but thankfully have found ways to laugh (eventually) about our own missteps and startling screw ups.

M. came face to face with a small disaster in the airport as we were about to leave for Australia. We were standing in line, eagerly anticipating our vacation and grumbling about a woman in front of us who had over packed her suitcase and was holding up the check-in line while she removed some items to meet the weight restrictions. When she opened her suitcase it sprung apart like a bomb had gone off. There were clothes everywhere and she was frantically trying to stuff everything back in with very little success. M. and I frowned and said things about how one should really be prepared to travel, and wasn't it annoying that the line was being held up. We judged her for being incapable of travelling light, and assumed that she was some sort of fashion obsessed prima donna. And then karma bit us in the ass as hard as it could without causing real bodily harm. When we finally reached the check in counter and handed over our passports M. received a blow in the form of four horrifying words:

"Your passport is expired" said the annoyed sounding attendant. Then, "You're not getting on this plane." Her voice suggested strongly that she absolutely did not care what our situation was. There was nothing she could do and she didn't even want to bother with a sympathetic attitude. It was clear from her harsh demeanor that begging wasn't going to help. I was certain that my bursting into tears wouldn't do a lick of good either, so I refrained from doing that. This was an issue of legality and M. could not legally board the plane regardless of how important it was that he do so. I felt the ground fall out from under me in that moment and I can only imagine that M. was experiencing a storm of epic proportions in his stomach.

"But my sister's wedding is in a week. We're playing the music!" He said with mounting panic.

"Well you're not getting on the plane," the attendant said dismissively and we headed off in horror to another counter where we spent one hour trying to sort out what to do and soon became "those people" that were holding up the line behind us. M. was becoming more and more concerned that he might actually miss his sister's wedding. He was not at all certain that he would be forgiven for that or even that he would survive the delivery of the news that he wouldn't be there. I almost burst out into panic induced laughter as I contemplated what a totally awful situation we were in. At least the woman at the new counter was kind and sympathetic and helped us to get our lives sorted out. She told M. he could get a rush passport on Monday morning and then got a flight booked for Wednesday. M. sat on the airport floor, traumatized, and angry at himself.

"How often does this happen?" he asked the kind woman behind the counter, no doubt hoping to be comforted by the fact that other people do this regularly.

"Not very often to be honest" came the reply. Oh. Damn. Apparently M. was unique in this particular type of error and I'm certain that didn't make him feel too good about himself. So I went to Australia by myself, but things worked out in the end. M. got on a Tuesday flight and made it in time for the wedding and I got to spend four days with his family where I had the opportunity to get to know them better. And our time apart reminded us why we like being together so much, so maybe there was a silver lining in it all. It also turns out that this has happened to a lot of other people. Stories started coming out in droves. Even the Yarn Harlot has a tale of similar woe. Oddly this seems to happen only to men, but that's not to say that women are exempt from making ridiculous mistakes. Just yesterday I discovered that while I thought I had my life under control, while I thought I had every detail hammered down, it turns out that I let a few things fall through the cracks...

I received an email from my cousin yesterday saying that he tried to call the number on the wedding invitation he received but it seemed to be wrong. Impossible! I thought. He must have dialed it incorrectly. But a nagging sense of dread took over my mind and I looked up the template I had made for my invitations. The template I had proof read a thousand times. The template a number of other people had proof read. The template that we printed 100 copies of and that I spent an entire evening gluing down to green card-stock, tying up with ribbons, stamping, and addressing. The template that I was absolutely sure was perfect. And what I discovered is that I screwed up my own phone number. There it was, just one number off and even after looking at a hundred copies of it multiple times my brain didn't register that it wasn't right. My heart sunk. I thought of how all of M's relatives would now think about how he's marrying a woman who doesn't know her own phone number.

When I was a child my mother made up a song so I could remember our home number. It was a catchy, rhyming jingle. Clearly it would have been a good idea for me to make up such a song for my current number, because if I had I might have avoided this insane embarrassment. I promptly set to beating myself up about my mistake. It was then pointed out to me that I might want to call the erroneous phone number to apologize to the random person who has been receiving my wedding RSVPs, so I spent a terrible moment dialing the wrong number and thinking about what I would say to the person that I had accidentally spammed with my life. Thankfully it turned out to be a non-number and I simply got a message that said "this number cannot be completed as dialed." And since M. had forgotten to update his passport and my mother reminded me that she had forgotten to put at date on the invitations to our engagement party I began to realize that I'm in good company. M. and I might just be perfect for each other in our minor incompetences and there are lessons to be learned in all of this:

None of us are flawless. We are prone to mistakes, disasters, oversights, and plain oblivion. The key is to realize that screwing up doesn't make you a failure in life or a broken person. It just means that you're human. I didn't love M. any less for his mistake and he didn't love me any less for mine. We buoyed each other up when we felt like we might drown. We insisted upon each others' intrinsic value when we each felt like complete morons. And we were reminded that we have been rather spectacularly busy and that perhaps we need to take it easy--be gentler to ourselves than we have been.

Anyway, if you have received a wedding invitation ignore the phone number. And check your passport. They have this strange tendency to expire while you're not looking.

Wild Things

2010-04-06T15:04:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to watching Where the Wild Things Are. I had the book when I was a child and I can clearly recall the stunning illustrations. I had low expectations of the movie since I assumed film could never capture the spare writing and intense images of the book. I expected to be disappointed, but what I didn't expect was that the movie would produce an uneasy feeling for days that was difficult to shake. If the point of the movie was to create a world that felt intensely uncomfortable and produced a lingering sense of depression, then it was successful, but I can't say that I actually enjoyed the movie. It got really good reviews and I think as a work of art it was successful. If the point of art is to make you feel something than this was extremely effective, but I was honestly creeped out by it in ways that are barely explicable.

The Wild Things are not wild at all, but tortured creatures unable to deal with their fluctuating emotions and feelings of loss, loneliness, and sadness. They are representative of Max himself--a child who feels abandoned by his family, who can't understand the relationships going on around him--his sister's preference for her friends, his mother's relationship with a new boyfriend. He struggles with a world that is incomprehensible to him. He doesn't understand the world or his own emotional state that is volatile and uncomfortable. He is a depressed child who acts out in anger because he doesn't know how else to respond to the world. I have to give kudos to Spike Jonze for creating a movie that takes seriously the precarious emotions of a child and suggests that they have reality and depth. However, I found that I couldn't much like Max, so it was hard to sympathize with his conflicted state.

The Wild Things are all aspects of Max's psyche--they represent anger, fear, loneliness, bitterness, and a desire to escape. It's a good idea, but I found them to be hugely unsettling--sort of a mix between Barney and the terrifying rabbit from Donnie Darko. The dialogue was creepy and the monsters undeveloped. I never did understand what their relationships to each other were. They are apparently some sort of family but you are never told how they are related. They aren't easily loveable and they are gripped by a pervasive sadness that doesn't have any identifiable cause beyond a vague notion that their family unit is falling apart somehow.

I appreciate the fact that the Hollywood notion of innocent and carefree childhood is turned on its head in this movie. It strikes out to show that childhood can be just as complicated and full of personal terror as any other stage in life, and perhaps adults are too quick to dismiss the emotional struggles of children as insignificant. But I spent much of the movie being alternately bored and disturbed by the story that didn't seem to go anywhere and the constant lack of any resolution or identifiable conflict. Max doesn't really succeed in fixing the monsters' sadness and even when he returns home after visiting their island there is no concrete reassurance that things are going to be okay. Max eats chocolate cake while his relieved mother watches him, but nothing is resolved. I am not left believing that Max has conquered the monsters within himself or that he has grown or that he will have a better understanding of the world in the future. This may be starkly realistic (the world doesn't always resolve itself the way we would like) but it was also hugely unsatisfying. There was nothing in the end to dispel the aura of darkness that the movie developed and I was left feeling dismal and empty. I can't quite figure out what so many people loved about it, but I'd be very interested to hear other opinions.

In the meantime I can recommend reading the book, but unless you want to feel like wallowing in sadness for a few days I can't recommend the movie.

Oz: Chapter 3

2010-03-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

A General Store near Gloucester, New South Wales, Australia

By Andrea

Victuals

When you're on vacation and you happen to be allergic to pretty much every common food in the world, you tend to spend a lot of your time procuring, preparing, and eating food. This can be massively frustrating, but I found that Australia (at least the hippie inhabited east coast) is a dream for the allergy inflicted. Sydney is full of insanely cheap and delicious Thai food which M. and I enjoyed while staying in Newtown. We also discovered that lamb is abundant and quite reasonably priced in Australia and seeing as lamb is an expensive luxury in Canada we may have gone a little nuts. I think it's possible that I ate an entire lamb during my three week stay. We frequented numerous butcher shops and treated ourselves to rosemary lamb sausages (that I'm pretty sure M. is going to think about and drool over for the rest of our lives), lamb steaks, and lamb chops. One night in Port Stephens I literally ate nothing but a giant lamb steak for dinner. It was rather unrefined. There I was with a paper plate on my lap eating a huge lamb steak with my hands, dripping lamb juice all over everything, washing it all down with wine, and thinking that life was awesome in that gluttonous moment. In terms of food we returned to the basics--everything went on the barbeque. We ate a diet consisting mainly of meat and grilled vegetables and fish that were swimming around in the ocean just hours before we ate it.

In Coff's harbour we stopped at a fish co-op where we purchased thick tuna steaks, seared them for about 10 seconds on each side, and ate them essentially raw at a public picnic spot near the ocean. I got to thinking that those sharks I'm so terrified of are treated to an exceptionally delicious sushi dinner on a daily basis. It's no wonder that sharks aren't actually keen on eating people. They have fresh tuna to dine on--why would they want my leg? This made me feel vaguely better as I imagined sharks discussing the quality of their ocean buffet and eating with chopsticks. Our seafood adventure also included pounds of fresh prawns that we viciously devoured after grilling them and tearing off their heads. I can tell you now that prawns are surprisingly ugly creatures and I wasn't having any trouble dismembering and eating them until M's brother's girlfriend started making her prawn talk.

"Eat me, eat me...I'm delicious" said her prawn. While the spectacle of a prawn with bugging dead black eyes begging to be consumed was extremely amusing for all I had a slight amount of trouble eating prawns after that. This was reinforced after we travelled through Yamba where we saw a famous giant prawn. The giant prawn is located on top of an old fish co-op and is slated to be torn down very soon. The whole thing was surrounded by fences and demolition equipment so we counted ourselves lucky to see the absolutely massive and totally ridiculous prawn on top of the building.

I tried kangaroo in Sydney. M's mother took it upon herself to make a kangaroo meatloaf and it was actually quite good, though somewhat astringent. There was a sharp flavour very unlike beef under the initial taste. It wasn't unpleasant but definitely not familiar. I was grateful not to have to rip off the kangaroo's head before eating it. While I can manage destroying fish I don't think I would do so well with mammals. Later in our trip we saw a field full of at least 2 dozen kangaroos and they looked so peaceful and lovely that I felt a bit guilty about having eaten one of their brethren.

For drinks we filled up on local wines and soy chai lattes. After stopping at a few cafes I was surprised to find that LSD was a common menu item. Initially startled about this I quickly discovered that Australian cafes are not in the habit of doling out hallucinogens in their coffee, but do make a soy latte out of dandelion root (Latte Soy Dandelion--a bit of a stretch to create the acronym I think!). Once I conclude that ordering LSD would not be illegal or in any way cause my brain to explode I gave it a try. I wish now that I could find the same thing in Canada! I don't even really know what was in it but LSD was delicious, with a rich ochre colour and a fascinating nutty flavour, kind of like walnuts. It was initially bitter, but had a pleasant sweet finish and I was deeply intrigued by the whole concoction. If anyone knows where to get such a thing in Vancouver I would be obliged. Apparently what it does have in common with the drug is an addictive quality.

Australian cafes are also notable for frequently having gluten free bread on offer, which made me very happy. I managed to have a delicious, warm, thick, soft piece of raisen toast at a cafe that made me remember how satisfying bread can be. I also found a loaf of fruit bread at an organic grocery store in Byron Bay along with vegan fudge bars made out of nuts, dark chocolate, and coconut milk. The problem with encountering such an abundance of food options is that I feel obligated to try everything I can eat on principal and this meant that I ate a lot. A LOT! I'm hoping that the wedding dress I ordered will still fit. I will not be going near a scale anytime soon.

And so my culinary excursions in Australia were deeply satisfying, exciting, and sometimes surprising. Though I am happy to be home now where food is famililar and I don't have to go through the process of trying to figure out what's in food I'm ordering at a restaurant and I don't have to read every label I encounter and I won't have to rip the heads off of anything for awhile.

Oz: Chapter Two

2010-03-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Palm Tree, Southead, Sydney Australia

Image by Andrea

M. and the Big BIG Spider

As I mentioned in my previous post Australia has a number of things that can kill you. These range from insects, to spiders, to snakes, to sharks, to mammals, to the ocean itself so that deadly encounters are just around every corner. Although a little bit of research shows that the thing most likely to kill you in Australia is not Funnel-Web spiders or Death Adder snakes but the sun! The sun in Australia is a harsh and dangerous thing that can quickly burn you to a crisp, cause heat exhaustion, dehydration, and death. I put on sunscreen 2-3 times per day while I was in Australia and still managed to get a mild burn. The combination of sunscreen, the drying effect of the heat, and lots of swimming in salt water also meant that I came home looking an awful lot like the Goanna we saw at our campsite. My skin took on a decidedly reptilian look and feel. It was flaking off. It was so dry that it didn't actually bend when I moved, it sort of folded and cracked. I looked about 2 decades older. It was horrifying! Perhaps even scarier than sharks. I've been slathering on moisturizer for days and exfoliating as if I have OCD and will evaporate if I don't attack myself with a loofah six times a day and I still look like a lizard. But I'm slowly returning to normal and hope to be fit to go out in public by the weekend.

Sun aside I didn't actually encounter any deadly things in Australia but M. and I did have a run in with a Huntsman Spider in our cabin on Fraser Island where we were doing a four wheel drive bus tour. We had just arrived in our room and had lazily tossed our bags on the bed when I took a cursory scan of my surroundings and found that I was sharing my immediate environment with a spider of epic proportions. Huntsman spiders do bite if provoked but all that you get is some localized pain. The worst thing about them is how disgustingly ugly they are. I felt a bit bad for being repulsed when I saw the spider crouching in the corner of the ceiling. Huntsmen are very helpful spiders. They literally hunt down all the insects in a room leaving it free from annoying mosquitoes and other things that might plague you. They don't build webs so you don't even have to dust away the remnants of their homes when they're done. Really, it's probably quite nice to live with a Huntsman--like having a barn cat or something. But I just couldn't get over the thought of that massive, furry, decidedly creepy arachnid crawling over me in the middle of the night or falling off the ceiling onto my head. It was clear that we could not coexist happily in the same room but it was also clear that there was no way in hell I was going near that thing. Not even with a 10 foot pole.

M., however, did exactly that. I mean, he went near it with a 10 foot pole. Literally. He was given the pole by a tour guide staying in the same cabin as us.

"You're on your own guys" he said as he handed M. the pole and took off to an undisclosed location. I did the only sensible thing I could think of--I went into the bathroom and sat on the sink with my feet pulled up off the floor and listened to M. crashing around in our room. His plan was to chase the spider down the wall with the pole and then herd it out of our room and eventually out of the cabin. I didn't want my feet on the floor when that thing came running out. M.'s plan was ambitious and I wasn't entirely convinced it was going to work. M. shouted reports on his progress to me in the bathroom.

"It won't move unless I actually poke it with the stick!" he said (followed by shuffling and motion).

"It's coming down the wall now!" he reported.

Then, "AHHH....It's on the pole! It jumped onto the pole!"

M. came rushing out of our room holding the pole out in front of him. He dashed outside and dumped the spider over the railing like a bona fide hero. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I admit that I checked our room very carefully before going to sleep, including looking under the bed, to make sure there weren't any more Huntsmen lurking in the shadows. I hope the spider is having a nice life outside. I like to think that we did it a favour. It had clearly cleaned out our room of food already. I didn't get a single mosquito bite while in the cabin!

Amaranth Road Studio

Attentive Ghost

Hugging Bears

Orkney Hat

Phone Fail

In Which I Attempt to Sew

Touching Pregnant Bellies

Book Review: Who Wants to Be a Poodle

Lucky Dog

Knits for My Baby

Recommended Reading: Toast by Nigel Slater

Featured Art: Frost Tree

Rupert Bear

Adventures in Quince

Crazy Pumpkin

Recommended Reading: Jeanette Winterson

Sapphire Sweater

The Pragmatic Artist

Giving Thanks

Manly Yogurt: Does Food Have Gender?

Blackberry Jam

Toby

Photo Saturday

Secret Sea

The Wolf-Mother

Guest Blogging

Drywall Apocalypse

Lacuna

Ukrainian Easter and More on Ethical Eating

Happy Easter

Don't Beat Yourself Up

Felted Eggs

How to Save a Cow

In Defense of Fiction

Worm Day 2011

Poison

Agriculture, Food, and Ridiculous Oxymorons

Amusing Facebook Updates

Mission Facebook Rejection: Failed

Soul of Orkney

I Scream, You Scream?

On Birds and Orchids

Rush Home Road

When Hallmark is Silent

Felted Chickadee

False Teeth

Lost Dreams of Motherhood

Why I've been MIA

Merry Christmas!

A World Without Miracles

When to Buy Organic

Organic in Vancouver

Felt for the Holidays

Choice of Chickens

Oraganic Challenge: Day 1

Food Challenge

Warning: Politics Ahead

Skunk Encounter

Do the Amish Use Facebook?

Felt Overload

Standing Stones

Needle Felting for Fall

Adventures in Applesauce

A Cure for Whooping Cough

Address to a Haggis

Love Underground

One More Sorrow

From Market to Yum!

Dare to Eat a Peach

Goodbye Facebook

Being Somebody

The Cabin

Wedding Sneak Preview

I can see the finish line...

Nelson Bird

Burnt Out

In Memory of Gidu

Shadowland

Polaroid Fever

The Pursuit of Free