Good things

During a visit with my friend Linda today, she reminded me that we should take conscious notice of the good things. Summarize them in words, focus on them for a few seconds, and the positive will get entrenched.

“Pfffhh,” I said, heading out for the trip home, toward an evening of tasks I wasn’t looking forward to. But on the way, I started thinking about the little girl and the dog from the day before.

I saw her only from the side and back as she crossed the street and headed away from me, but her coat was swinging open and her long hair trailed down her back. She was holding a leash and she was, yes, skipping along the street. Who skips these days? I couldn’t think of the last time I’d seen someone skipping: what a bouncy quintessence of carefree joy!

The dog thought so, too. It was a small white dog, just the right size for a little girl, and it kept watching her sideways, as if it, too, was enjoying the sight. Its tail wagged; it looked as if it wanted to skip right along with her.

But what capped the picture for me was the dog’s feet. On each of its little paws were booties the colour of yellow rainboots. Didn’t these two belong in a child’s picture book?

They were long gone before I even thought of my camera, but Linda’s comment brought them back. The girl, the skipping, the boots – a really good thing to remember.

Dust and ashes

A new Polygon Gallery exhibition focusing on dust  was sparked by this image, a 1920 photograph by artist Man Ray. It's of a Marcel Duchamp work in progress, a dust-covered sheet of glass. The image has apparently intrigued artists and photographers ever since it appeared in a French journal under the deliberately misleading caption, "View from an aeroplane." Don't ask.

The show features photographs from the last 100 years focusing on the theme of dust. It includes a number of press photos from the American West dust-bowl in the 1930s.

This is what a watch looked like after the Nagasaki  atomic explosion. 

Ex-employees of the Kodak film factory watch it implode. Many are using digital devices to record the moment.

John with his cane, his leg still hurting, and me with my preoccupation with a massive writing project, did not do justice to the Polygon Gallery’s Handful of Dust exhibition. It’s a collection of photographs from the last 100 years focusing on the theme of dust, and highly praised by all kinds of publications, from The Guardian to the Globe & Mail to the local Georgia Straight.

But oh dear.

At the end of a winter filled with extreme-weather stories from everywhere in Canada and illnesses or injuries affecting many of my favourite people, the last thing I really needed was:

Images of dirt storms bearing down on small towns in the American West; the unsettling effects of the Nagasaki atomic bomb blast on a watch and a beer bottle; the implosion of a Kodak film factory, being digitally recorded by ex-employees; a statue of a seated businessman covered in dust and debris after the World Trade Centre attack; a plaster cast of a Mount Vesuvius eruption victim-- an elderly man plumply relaxed on his side. All accompanied by eerie soundtracks and videos I didn’t want to investigate too closely.

We missed the opening-night comments by London, England-based curator David Campany, but the Georgia Straight reported that he said the pervasive tone of the show is one of “dread.”  The gallery website notes the original photograph of dust that prompted all this was published in the same month (in 1922) as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which contained the line: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

So, fear and dread it was. We might have enjoyed it more at the height of summer.

This was the one image that seemed to have sense of hope, possibly because of the golden light. It was called "In deeper," which could mean just about anything.

My wounded valentines

Wheelchair, cane, walker? Until recently, they wouldn't have belonged in the same photo as my partner John and my friend Linda.

When we visited Linda on Monday, she showed us the new resistance band she's using to strengthen her muscles to help her get back on her feet. 

John has discovered various uses for my mother's old cane, including whacking a package of frozen peas to break them up before using them as an ice pack. One day the package will burst.

My partner John and my friend Linda are two of the healthiest people I know. At age 73, both heft weights and stretch regularly, eat real food, and John bikes and runs while Linda is a long-distance walker.

They are the last people I could imagine using walkers or canes, pain drugs or wheelchairs. Alas, things have changed.

Since Dec. 9, when she was hit by a car while walking (naturally) across an intersection, Linda has been learning about not just walkers and wheelchairs, but also the world of grab bars, bedside commodes, and bathtub seats.

John’s suffering has been shorter, but since a soccer injury a few weeks ago, he’s learned the language of physiotherapists, pain drugs and anti-inflammatories. He brought my mother’s old cane out of retirement. He discovered that frozen peas are more pliable for icing purposes than a regular ice pack. Also that hitting peas with a cane is a good way to break them up.

The good news is that both these healthy people are on the way to resuming their regular lives. I realized that when they were willing to be photographed on Monday with all the accoutrements they will soon be discarding.

One of the few pluses of being injured is sympathy flowers -- in this case to Linda from her nephew Matthew.

Another section of the big bouquet she got and rearranged into smaller ones.

The scene that awaits when Linda is finally back out on the False Creek seawall near her place. The weirdly shaped Vancouver House seems somehow appropriate for someone who has been toppled by a car. 

A very long experience of snow

Many feet of snow nearly hide the steps to the back-yard bunky (cottage) at my sister Betty's place in the Laurentians in Quebec. She and her husband Bert are into their fifth month of snow, and there's lots more to come.

Molly with snow and trees near Betty's place. What more could a dog wish for?

Betty's husband Bert with a pile of the snow cleared so far from the roof of the car shed. 

Who's a happy dog, then? Molly clutches her toy despite her immersion in snow. 

Amused, perhaps, by my account of Vancouver's days-long brush with snow, my sister Betty sent me some reminders on Saturday of what winter is like in her part of the world.

She and her husband Bert and their dog Molly live in a small house in the Quebec Laurentians, surrounded by trees and lakes and other small houses. They always have lots of snow, but Betty says this year has been unusual, competing with a massive dump in 2008. The snow began at the end of October and is falling still. Icy rain has compacted it over the months, but it's four feet high on the roof of a shed they don't clear. Betty figures they've had at least five feet. So far.

Along with the snow have been stretches of temperatures in the -20s, with wind chills into the -30s. "That means you strap on your ice cleats before stepping out the door because the layers of ice and snow can be treacherous," Betty writes. "I feel like Spiderman sometimes when the road is frozen solid and the cleats dig in and make my footing sure." She says modern winter gear is "pretty amazing," and as long as you go out fully armoured, you can actually enjoy the outdoors.

Molly loves the snow, plunging in with gusto and plowing paths through the snowbanks. "She barks excitedly when we shovel snow and writhes in the air chasing it," Betty says. "She is made for snow with her double coat." But even she needs protection sometimes. "A couple of days were so cold that we put Molly's booties on to stop her from holding up paws and whining piteously at us!"

While we in Vancouver consider snow an aberration, a temporary inconvenience that freezes our birdbaths, crushes our spring flowers and forces us to get out and -- gasp! -- shovel, it's a normal part of Betty's life.

"We live in the cold and the snow for usually around five months a year but are not unhappy. As my neighbour says, 'Embrace it!'"

But still. On Saturday, by a receding snowdrift, I saw my first dandelions of the year. A little crushed, but there they were, blooming.

The view from Betty and Bert's front window. 

All those steps leading to the back of the bunky need to be cleared regularly. 

Snow-laden trees by the roadside near Betty's place.

Meanwhile in Vancouver on Saturday, dandelions in bloom.

A brief experience of snow

The buds of my front-yard magnolia capture snow magically.

The back-porch hummingbird feeder, a prosaic kind of object, looks much prettier against a background of snowy trees.

Snow is old news everywhere else in Canada, but in Vancouver the first big blast of winter is always an amazement. Especially when the sky turns blue the morning afterward, leaving trees full of white cotton puffs shining in the sun.

 All morning, those fluffy balls avalanched down in little explosions from the highest branches, or melted away in dripping blobs. By the end of the warmish afternoon, the magic was gone.

 The reality lingered on the ground, though, where the front sidewalk needed a double scraping and a scattering of de-icer. The bird baths are still mounds of snow, and I’ve given up clearing the back-yard paths.

Another big storm is supposed to blow through on Thursday. We’re hoping it will bring rain, not snow. If we’re lucky, just like that, our winter will be over.

A snowy wilderness in the front garden this morning....

...turned into an ordinary streetscape by the afternoon.

The back-yard hedge and witch hazel this morning ...

... looked like spring-time by the afternoon.

The raccoons make good use of our yard in the night-time, apparently. These prints were on the back-yard path.

A good day or two of rain should take care of this bench covering.

The back lane, sigh. It was garbage day, but nothing gets picked up on snow days in our area. The trucks have trouble with the hill.

Our next-door neighbour's trees looked spectacular in the morning.

This is the sidewalk  that must be cleaned by 10 a.m. every snow day. Because it is in such deep shade, the ice sticks around even when the temperatures go above zero. I shoveled it twice, then had to throw de-icer on it. 

John is a captive to his sore knee, elevated, with ice pack. He is so bored after a week in the house that he would love to be shoveling snow.

Shoveling

All bundled up, with a snow shovel awaiting, I am ready to tackle the first snow of the winter. Somewhere under that white blanket are daffodils with buds about ready to open, and a crushed daphne or two. All photos by John Denniston.

My sister Betty and her husband Bert have been shoveling snow at their little house in the Quebec Laurentians for four or five months now. He does the roof; she does steps and walkways. When I talked to her recently, she remarked: “Clearing snow actually takes quite a lot of time, you know.”

So I will not complain about Vancouver getting its first snowfall of the winter on Sunday. Or that the shoveling job, which normally goes to John, is mine this time around because of his bum leg. Pushing a snow shovel while using a cane would be too pathetic.

I did two rounds of shoveling on Sunday, after which the snow really began to fall, so my job isn’t over yet. Revisiting Betty’s remark about the time it takes, I had a truly Vancouver thought: How much extra do we pay for housing out here, I wondered, to make up for the amount of time we don’t spend shoveling snow?

The first shoveling of the season is kind of ... satisfying. By the third or fourth time, I won't be thinking that.

Vancouver is expecting about 10 centimetres of snow this time around. We've only just begun.

Clearing the backyard pathway to the garbage cans and compost heap. I won't get fined if I don't do it -- like I would if I didn't clear the front sidewalk -- but it makes life easier. 

Soccer at 73

When John tried to return to the game he excelled in as a kid, it backfired. Luckily, we still had my mother's cane, and plenty of Advil. 

He's go-karted, motorcycle-raced, run and bicycled, but John's heart has always been with his first love -- soccer. He started playing at age seven, was the 1959 West Van Soccer Boy of the Year at 14, and played in the First Division Mainland League for North Shore United at age 16.

He quit playing at age 20 when work, then his other sports and various commitments turned him in other directions. But when a Saltspring neighbour suggested going out for pickup game a few months ago, it was fun! Suddenly, John was doing more running and kicking a ball around than bicycling. He signed up for indoor soccer at the community centre and found a weekly outdoor pickup group.

Ten games later, he is on the couch with Advil and a cane. There are plans for physiotherapy and an X-ray when the pain is dull enough that he can leave the house again.

Seventy-three, he is starting to think, may be a bit late for a comeback.

Describing the new Oakridge

A bus-shelter ad for Oakridge's big new development seemed a little strange, so I looked closer. The ad was behind plastic, but somebody found a way to edit it anyway.

A micro-city inspired by a hill-top medieval town in Italy? A “skin-and-bones” construction with a “fine light fabric that wraps the buildings in a unifying veil”? A development with the architecturally modernistic flair of Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong?

Those are some of the descriptions floating around the Internet about the single largest redevelopment in Vancouver’s history, the 28.5-acre redo of the Oakridge Centre Mall at 41^st and Cambie. It will include 10 towers of varying heights up to 44 storeys, with condos costing $800,000 to $5.7 million, along with an immensity of other facilities.

Clearly, not everybody is impressed. An odd look to a bus-stop poster advertising the development drew my eye the other day. Somebody had scratched out key phrases and added others: They did not include any reference to hill-top towns, unifying veils or modernistic flair.

The new version: "The overcrowded city. An urban hell celebrating the unbreakable bond between developers and greed."

Nothing was scratched out in this part, but "Urban Distopia (sic)" was added.

So, how would you describe it? The buildings look like lurching dinosaurs caught in glass nets to me, but that's just my opinion.

She's back!

A pre-crash photo of  my friend Linda, who has been in a wheelchair since being hit by a car in December. She's taken up knitting again, but it will be awhile before she's back in my kitchen helping with the dishes.

My friend Linda, hit by a car as she was walking across an intersection on Dec. 9, has spent the last two months in a wheelchair. An injury to her shoulder made knitting a painful prospect at first, but then along came her physiotherapist, whose wife was getting ready to deliver their first baby.

The knitting needles reappeared, the shoulder injury receded, and by the time the baby was born, Linda had completed her first post-crash project, a little blue lion. Her physio was so delighted that he sent her a photo of the newborn with the toy.

Linda still had some wool around, and there are always children in line for her creations, so within a week, the lion sisters arrived.  Here they are -- not just new toys, but a celebration of an avid knitter back in action.

I like the expressions on the faces of these colourful, fluffy-maned sisters. 

Flexible joints mean they can assume various positions. One appears to be inspecting the other's beautifully curled tail. 

The lion sisters hiding out with Linda's plants. 

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la!

Well, these crocuses are almost blooming. I photographed them on a cold day, and they needed some sunshine.

A cherry -- or is it a plum tree? -- is out early, just up the street. Photo by John Denniston.

My neighbour's snowdrops, in her very clean and tidy garden.

These dangling buds in Camosun bog look like a good beginning to spring.

Daffodils are actually blooming outside in sunny spots, but I cheated and bought these for the dinner table.

Guests from eastern Canada, looking at the polar vortexes and extreme cold warnings they were missing at home last week, sighed over Vancouver’s mild weather and blooming flowers.

They’re headed back home now, so they will miss the hype about – gasp! – snow flurries expected on Sunday, and the coldest temperatures of the year, waaay down to -6C.

The snow will go (or never arrive) and the temperatures will rise, but the other side of living in the best climate in Canada won’t change. The conversation about housing prices, that inevitable endpoint of any Vancouver discussion – as our visitors noticed -- will go on and on.