January 29, 2012

I have to admit that winter in Vernon isn’t bad.  I’ve been determined not to sing the ‘god’s country’ refrain as so many of the people from the prairies and Ontario who have recently moved here do, but it is wonderful to live in a city that has relatively mild weather, little snow and no freezing rain, and yet be able to drive for 25 minutes into mountains that are white with deep snow and ski conditions that are excellent.  I finally got back to cross country skiing this Monday, and on Thursday and Saturday, downhilled in the best powder I’ve skied in since Jim and I were in Utah.  It hasn’t always been sunny, but the visibility is good and the powder so soft that even I, who have been skiing carefully this season because I don’t want to do any more damage to my right shoulder, am not afraid of falling.  I am, of course, staying on intermediate hills.  And to think, they don’t even have snowmaking equipment at Silver Star.  I met my 2^nd SSASS student on Thursday, an 8 year old boy named Rhees.  He also has autism, but unlike Shea, really wants to learn to ski because his dad is a good skier.  He was fun to be with.  He kept repeating as we went up the magic carpet, “ I can’t believe how excited I am!”  He’s as distracted, unfocused and full of his own imaginative stories as Shea is but once he’s heading down the hill, he keeps his eyes on his instructor and does exactly what she does.  It’s a joy to see how perfectly he copies movements even though he was telling ‘knock knock’ jokes the whole time I was trying to explain to him what we were going to do.  I also prefer to learn by doing and imitating those who are more advanced than I am; I just make a better pretense of listening to the theory.  Again this week, we didn’t get Shea beyond walking up and down hills and through the village in her ski boots, but she was less upset by the effort and blowing snow than last week and promised that she would ski in her next class. 

Coming down from skiing makes me think of carwashes because the only downside of skiing here is driving on the heavily sanded roads that make your car look as if it belongs to a yahoo off roader in one trip.  So my friend Mi-Sun and her husband are making money owning a car wash.  But it’s hard work.  This Friday she looked really tired and was.  They had about 3 problems with water and drainage at their place this week and after spending hundreds, they still weren’t resolved.  They are working hard for the money they are making.  But they must be making money.  This week as we got into our cars at the end of class, I noticed for the first time that hers is a new BMW.  I am inclined to leap to conclusions based on little evidence, but this observation of an Oriental person in a BMW or Mercedes has contributed to my developing generalization that Occidentals buy cars made in the Orient and Orientals buy cars made in Germany.  I drive a Mazda.

I saw a very good movie, ‘Le Havre’, on Monday.  The writer and director is a Finnish man, Aki Kaurismaki.  It’s the story of how a group of people who live and work in the port of Le Havre helps a young African boy who has escaped from a cargo container and wants to join his mother in England.  In spite of the limited dialogue, the people are eloquent and humane, the mood is low key but with humor and suspense as well.  Although it was set in France, the mood was Finnish.  It reminded me of the Helsinki section of Jim Jarmusch’s film, ‘A Night on Earth’; Jim and I thought that was the best part of that movie.  I googled Aki Kaurismaki and discovered that Jim Jarmusch had a cameo in one of his early movies, ‘Leningrad Cowboys Go America’.  It sounds as if it would be really funny, in a Finnish way. 

Last night I met a friend, Jane, at the Vernon Jazz Club to listen to an Okanagan group called ‘Offramp Jazz Sextet.’  They were really good, especially the pianist and percussionist.  The latter did something called beat boxing, a kind of vocal percussion, as a lead into ‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’.  It was amazing, and as he did it the other band members came up on stage one at a time, piano, sax, clarinet, bass and singer until they were really giving ‘er.  Now I’m enjoying a quiet Sunday.  It’s quite warm, about 4, so I think I’ll go for a walk when I finish this.

Snow on the deck at 8:00 this morning.  It's all melted now.

My little retirement man in the snow this morning.

Hibernation

Last week I hibernated for 3 days.  The temperature was around -20, and I was happy for the excuse to stay inside reading, etc.  I went for a long walk each day, except Wednesday when it was below -20.  I told my friend Mo that I was getting fat eating my own words because I’ve said a few times to people who complain that it’s cold here that for a person who comes from Thunder Bay and the Gatineau Hills, it’s not.  The forecast for the top of Silver Star on Thursday was for -22, so classes were cancelled, but Mo and John and I decided to ski anyway and conditions were fine, a little overcast but not below -15.  However a lot of our students don’t move much, so it was probably best to cancel classes.  On Saturday we had a good talk with Shea’s mom and decided to go back to the beginning and just get her used to walking in her skis and going down a couple of small hills in the village.  Her coordination really is limited, but her mother admitted to the fact that even she has trouble sometimes knowing whether Shea can’t or just won’t do certain things.  We had some fun and we’ll see what happens next week.  I ended up helping with Marie’s class in the afternoon because she is in New York and couldn’t take her student.  His name is Edison.  He’s the same age as Shea, seven.  He has very serious mental and physical handicaps.  We used an amazing contraption to move him around on his skis.  He doesn’t talk and seems to either be quiet and contemplative or to laugh or cry.  He’s very cute, and I enjoyed working with him.  It was a good test for the ‘dew rag’ I invented last week because I got in a sweat moving him around and my hair stayed dry, to think that I am even concerned about such a stupid detail.  I had such respect for Edison’s dad.  He’s a very large man who radiates ‘you can count on me’.  It’s easy to see why Edison has such faith in him.  He ran around with us most of the time but left us at moments to slowly let Edison get used to being without him.  After the class we talked in the SSASS room where we all change and eat lunch.  Some of the kids knew him because he teaches drama at a school in Vernon.  He was joking with the kids as he wiped the drool from Ed’s chin and told me a bit about their family.  They have two other children, younger than Ed and both without handicaps.  I really enjoy the atmosphere in the SSASS room.  It’s positive and practical with not a hint of Pollyanna.  The students and volunteers know that life’s neither easy nor fair, but it’s a fact that can be dealt with more or less successfully and even with humour, depending on our attitude and the help we give to and get from others.  There’s a lot of joking and laughter in the room, a few tantrums and some people who just want to be left alone for a while.  Shea, who can drop and scream with the best of them and who is not keen on physical activity, sat silent and wide-eyed as an older boy came in from his snowboard lesson yelling about how he hated it and was never going to do it again.  Then that faded and people carried on eating, talking and either taking off or putting on gear. 

I’m looking after Marie and George’s dog, Osito, again this weekend while they are in New York City buying a piano.  It’s a very good and expensive one that George has wanted and saved for for quite a while.  He plays very well, but I have never heard him because every time I go to their house for a concert, someone else is playing their piano.Osito is flopped out beside me now after the long walk we had this afternoon.  He’s snoring.

Osito in the field at the top end of our walk.  Fluffed up with winter fur, you can see why he's called 'little bear', except for the tail.

The main street of Vernon from half way back home.

A longer view of Vernon

I have taped some of the Australian Open.  When I finish this I’ll pour a glass of wine, watch it and imagine I’m in the warmth down under.      

living and learning

The Ides of January have come, but not yet passed.  So far it’s been a quiet Sunday.  I’ve just got back from a walk in the crisp air.  I took what is becoming my usual route, from my house,which is near the base of what Vernonites refer to as East Hill, up about 20 blocks to the fields at the edge of town and then a bit farther to the base of the hills that form the east wall of the valley.  At this point I’m in a wooded area where nobody can see me as I stretch, bend and blow my nose.  Today I watched four or five Steller’s Jays fly around in the trees nearby.  They’re beautiful when the sun illuminates their iridescent blue-black feathers.  Their low rasping caw; however, is not much more pleasant than the annoying yapping of the little condo dogs that inhabit the gated community I pass on the way up.  I also saw a fairly large hawk swoop down into a field, rise with nothing and fly off.  We had a bit of snow on Saturday, so all is white, but just.  The roads and sidewalks are bare. When I sat with Mo and John in their hot tub yesterday after the first day of adaptive ski lessons, the snow began to fall in huge heavy flakes.  I had to clear it off the car before I left, but by the time I got home it had stopped.  I shoveled the public walk in front of the house right away, as did all my neighbors.  It’s the only time we see each other and chat in the winter.  We’re almost all out together, getting our civic duty done while the snow’s still fluffy, before people, prams and bikes imbed their prints into the pavement.  Winter here seems mild to me, but we have just entered the heart of it, so we’ll see what that brings.

I think I’m going to learn a lot about autism this season.  At the potluck last Wednesday night, I met Shea, one of the students I will have in the adaptive ski program.  She’s a cute, seven-year old with long blonde hair; she looks and is great.  We had some laughs.  She likes ‘softies’ and wondered what Jay used to call his favorite ones.  I wondered what she was doing in the program, but kept quiet about it.  By the end of the evening, I had some ideas, and our first class on Saturday made it all clear.  She’s been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, neither of which I know much about, but I’m learning.  It’s her parents who want her to ski; she’s not interested at all.  She’s extremely bright and talks and sings and makes verbal connections that are absolutely fascinating, but she can’t even put her ski boots on, let alone get the boots into the bindings.  I was working with another woman, and it took the two of us to get her into her skis, onto the snow and to begin the slow shuffle to the ‘magic carpet’.  She can stand and walk, but in skis, she either doesn’t want to move or can’t.  I spent the whole two hours trying to figure out whether she lacked the will or the muscle control to do anything on skis.  She couldn’t seem to exert enough pressure on the edges of her skis to make even a ‘V’ shape for a snow plow, which I tried to cajole her into doing by calling it a piece of rhubarb pie because she had loved the piece she ate at the potluck.  Today I had a long talk with the woman I’ll be working with on Thursday mornings, and she told me that our student is also autistic, but fortunately, he likes skiing at least.  I’m going to be learning as much as if not more than I’m teaching at this job.  By the end of the Saturday session, I was so hot from working with Shea that my hair was wet under my helmet.  When I took it off, my hair was an embarrassing mess.  Today I spent a few minutes reinventing the ‘dew rag’.

I’m going to wear a cotton headband under the helmet to try to keep my hair at least a bit dry.  Thank goodness the Immigrant Services work is easy and learning Korean may be impossible, but it’s fun and I don’t get in a sweat about it.

Dad with Matti and Lindsay's daughter, Cleo

Mom with Cleo

Life laughs on

When I first heard, “Get a life,” I think it was uttered by a professional golfer to a heckler in the crowd.  It was perfect for the situation, “what of’t was thought but ne’er so well expressed”.  But like all apt expressions, it has been overused, and now when I hear it I usually find it banal.  In the last almost 2 years, I have been trying to ‘get a life’, and it’s not an easy thing to do.  The temptation to curl up and read or watch one of the many episodes of Poirot, MI5 or Masterpiece Theatre that I have on the PVR is sometimes overwhelming.  And I often give in to it.  But I knew that might happen because I had succumbed to it for much of my first year away from Thunder Bay at Queen’s University.  There too I had to mold a new me and at first it was a much fatter and more depressed one.  It took almost three months of strict dieting and hard studying to pull through,x and I was determined not to let the leaving of family and friends in Wakefield usher in another bout of overeating and underdoing.  Consequently, I searched the pages of Vernon’s newspaper and accepted all invitations to do anything.  And now 2012 is beginning, and although I find some days to be long, I’m learning to enjoy the fact that I can manage my own time and that the activities I am involved in are challenging.  I don’t know how good I’ll be at helping handicapped people ski.  The students and volunteers meet tomorrow at the Anglican Church across from my house for a potluck, so I soon will.  And if I ever learn Korean, it will be a miracle.  Perhaps while I’m at the potluck I should offer a prayer.  But Mi-Sun and I have fun together; last week a woman who had been sitting near us at Tim’s came over as she left and commented on how she had enjoyed listening to us struggling with English and Korean and laughing.  I’m meeting some admirable people and learning to be less knee jerk judgmental.  Or at least, if I jump to some humorous conclusion about someone based on very little exposure to them, I try to accept it for its entertainment value but be less ready to voice it in public or believe it myself.  At least, I hope that’s the case.  If I do get a new life, one of the old tendencies I’m going to have to rein in is the one that has me running off at the mouth.   

I went to a movie again this week with Mo and John, Martin Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’.  Unfortunately we saw it at the good old Town, and it was not in 3D.  Consequently, it was a little flat.  The story was touching but by turns overdone and boring.  It was so full of cogs, wheels and mechanical devices that it seemed more like a Spielburg film.  I think that if it had been in 3D; however, I would have appreciated more the fact that it was a worthy homage to one of the original movie directors, Georges Melies (about whom I had only heard from Jim).  Most of the critics I have read seem to think it was.  The complex works of the train station clocks and one scene of a train accident would have been pretty spectacular in 3D.

I talked again to someone who works for Expedia in Cairo this week.  This time it was a woman, and she knew Fadi, the man who helped me the last time.  It appears that I had better not hold my breath waiting for my itinerary to show up on line.  Something is amiss in that system, but she assured me that all is well for my trip to Korea in May. 

Before I get complacent about life in Vernon and cease to notice what surrounds me, I have taken some photos of the city this week.  Many of the walls of public buildings have good murals painted on them.  Here are three that are in one small area near City Hall.  

The east side of the post office building near City Hall

The same, slightly enlarged

An homage to a local potter

I thought Maureen and David would appreciate the potter's comment on the use of a thermometer, and I will point out to Ina that he was from Sweden.

Another local artist

  

Happy New Year

Happy 2012 to all!    May it be a year of peace, good health and joy, not necessarily in that order, but I put peace ahead of the others because the first news I heard this morning was about the fact that the North Korean military had been told to become ‘human rifles and bombs’ in the defense of Kim Jong-un.  As  Jay is in South Korea, probably the first target for those human weapons, I have a powerful reason to hope for peace.

I had an easy drive to Victoria on Dec. 20.  The car was loaded with Christmas baking and leftovers from the party; every water bottle I own was full of eggnog.  I could have spent winter in a snow bank and been towed out in the spring without having lost a pound.  As it was, we ate well over the holiday.  Now I’m home again determined to have only healthy food and eager to get out skiing and back to working with Kiran and Mi-Sun.  The latter sent me a Christmas card, so I now know how to spell her name. 

Mom and dad are keeping up the struggle for independence, which I now know is just as strong when you’re old as it is when you’re young.  The difference is that when you’re in your teens and early twenties, you’re desperate to get out of the house, and when you’re in your nineties, you’re fighting to stay in it.  The similarities are that both would almost rather die than live without a car, dangerous as that may be for those who share the road with them and that both are absolutely unwilling to take advice from anyone who assumes that by virtue of their age they are qualified to give it.  So I went for long walks by the ocean when I was in Victoria and had good conversations with Barbara and Terry over coffee and lunch.  Wjhen I returned to my parents, they were rested, I had relieved my tensions and we were able to enjoy each other’s company.  We had a good Christmas together, for which I am happy because I don’t know how many more there will be. 

The drive home was not great, and I wasn’t as well provisioned as I had been going, but I made it in spite of snow and bad drivers.  I’ve been in worse conditions but not driving alone.  At the summit of the Coquihalla, the road was snow covered and visibility was limited by blowing snow.  I stayed in the slow lane and watched a drama unfold between the Arrogant Worm and the Hell-Bent-For-Leathers, most of whom were in trucks and SUVs.  AW slithered into the fast lane, which was smoother and more worn than the other, and carried on at a safe 60km/hr while an increasingly long line of HBLs collected behind him eager to push the limit, which at that point was 110km/hr.  Some got behind me and tried to tailgate me into going faster than I dared.  Although at times I was going faster than the worm and a few did get by that way, but the frustration was building.  Finally, I slowed right down and the HBLs went around me and burned past the worm, who, like most of his kind, was probably blind to their fury.  This bit of theatre took up most of the really bad part of the drive.  By the time we got to Merritt, the conditions had improved.  The rest of the drive was fine, and there was no snow on the road in the Okanagan.

I went to the Town cinema to watch ‘the Muppet Movie’ with Mo and John on New Years Eve and then back to their house for drinks and dinner.  And now it’s 2012.

Mom and dad in their kitchen preparing Christmas breakfast

Mom and dad wearing the pyjamas Bill sent them for Christmas

A rhododendron blooming in Oak Bay

Terry's picture of me at the pub

My picture of Barbara and Terry at the pub

The soon-to-be-destroyed Blue Bridge taken from the pub

On the ferry, passing another, smaller ferry