Happy New Year 🕊🍾

A few nights ago I woke in the dark and wondered why until my ears slowly made out the tumbling notes of "The Shadow of Your Smile". I lay back down and drifted off to sleep. I haven't touched the church of Nog since.

And I better not touch it in 2018 because it's a year of the dog and I'm a dog. My new student Katy who's from Taiwan and is mildly interested in the Chinese Zodiac did a research and translation project for me on that subject. The news was not good, especially in the areas of health and money. DAMN. I'm beginning the year with a bum knee and back and was looking forward to better health and more wealth in 2018. Maybe I'll get a bit of wisdom instead, just enough to realize I've got what I need and that's as good as a feast. Katy was a bit nervous about revealing bad news to her teacher, but we ended up having some laughs. Mandarin is an amazing language to try to translate. I guess because it doesn't have an alphabet but is comprised of symbols it seems to translate into English in a choppy way. In spite of the prospect of misfortune ahead for me, we laughed at her rendering of what "you dogs" must prepare for in the coming year.







Snowshoeing on the shore of Kal Lake this week. The dog days of winter.

Christmas is coming; the turkey's thawing out

It's noon on Tuesday, December 19 and Vernon is finally white for Christmas. When I woke this morning all was clear, but by now an unknown good Samaritan has shovelled the front walk and it is quickly getting covered again. The radio has just announced that the Coquihalla southbound between Hope and Merritt has been closed. I hope Mo and John made it over the Rogers Pass this morning; they're heading to Alberta for the holidays.







Before I get lost in the moment, I want to recognize the fact that Ron Noginosh died on November 15 this year. He had had heart trouble even before Jim died but had carried on quite well until he dropped suddenly while sitting with Max. I hadn't seen him in ages but I have fond memories of his visits to our place, sometimes with his sons. He rarely showed up when he said he would but we could count on surprise visits, sometimes to use the sauna as a sweat lodge with his boys. It's true that he had a "biting wit and a wild and wacky sense of humour". I'm lucky to have some of his works to remind me of that. In fact a bizarre thing happened when May and I were putting together the Christmas tree last week. We are two accident prone women, but in spite of the fact that I knew that from past catastrophes, I hadn't even had the forethought to get breakable things out of harm's way. Crash! The first to fall was 'The Church of Nog'. Ron's wonderful creation that I bought about 20 years ago at Mela's silent auction. The glue had dried so that when it hit the floor its many wacky symbols scattered. I must have looked shattered because May instantly assumed blame. I could see how sorry she felt, so I tried to lessen her guilt by making light of it and comparing the desecration of the church of Nog so soon after Ron's death to the old song about the grandfather's clock that "stopped short never to go again when the old man died". She'd never heard that song so it eased the moment as we picked up the bits. We found them all, even the little AFN (Assembly of First Nations) pin. The next day, I went to Canadian Tire and bought a tough metal glue. The objects had been so long on the church that a vague impression of each remained on it so I was able to glue them back on. The only part that has not fully recovered is the little music box that played 'The Shadow of Your Smile'. Once in a while a few notes ping out, hardly a shadow. But the memory of Ron and his inventiveness remains sharp.








I went to Jay and May's this Sunday for lunch and our annual decoration of Christmas cookies. I make the cookies but the girls are the decorators. Jay really threw himself into it this year too.

Poetry

Last night I went with Miriam and Bill to a poetry reading organized by Miriam's bookclub. Usually they invite local poets to read but this time they decided that each person would introduce and read a poem, one they had either written or chosen. I had no idea what to expect and took quite a while choosing my contribution and thinking of how to present it, finally settling on 'One Art' by Elizabeth Bishop. In my introduction I said that the content of the poem was very meaningful to me but that I wouldn't dwell on that. It was the art of the poem I wanted to show. I went on to say that the best poems are the essence of literature; they are to writing what 'tire' is to the sap of the maple tree. I used the word 'tire' not taffy because the latter didn't seem to conjure up the image I was trying to convey of long boiling sap, amber essence poured over early spring snow, rolled onto a stick and licked, the unique maple sweetness bursting with memories of blazing leaves in the fall. But as I spoke I realized that the word 'tire' had no meaning for them. What I had thought was going to be a glorious analogy wasn't. I 'shut'er down', as Jay would say, and read the poem.
It didn't need an introduction.




The rest of the evening was entertaining, an eclectic group of individuals reading their poems or those of others with more or less success. It was my first time being among people I didn't know well who were mustering the courage to present to others what was meaningful to them.

Last Saturday the big maple in the back yard was pollarded by Caitlyn Snyder, a young arborist who has her own company, Wise Wood Tree Care. I called her in because I could tell that the tree had been pollarded before and some of the huge new branches looked unstable. But I was surprised when she estimated that the work had probably been done about 15 years ago. I had thought it must have been at least 25 years because the branches were so big.
Watching her at work was fun. She was in the cage herself, manoeuvring it and cutting, either with a scythe-like saw or a chain saw. Two young men ran around gathering the limbs as she carefully let them drop and pulling them into the chipper. She arrived late because of unforeseen hitches but managed to cut the last branch just as the sun set.













The pollarded maple. It's quite stark, but as a result, I was able to get a spectacular view of the super moon on Sunday evening. I probably wouldn't have seen it through all the branches and I hadn't heard about it before seeing it.

Jay sent me this cartoon yesterday. It's the most succinct expression I've seen so far of the dilemma we live with in these days of Trump. I hope these days are numbered and it doesn't become the age of him because if it's just for a while we can learn a lot from it about wisely doubting all powerful people but if it goes on for too long we'll just get numb from the neck up.