A New Mourning

This is the happy part...my Mom has befriended a homeless fellow who lives beside the lawn bowling clubhouse. He can't tolerate 'inside' anywhere so lives completely 'outside' even to the extent that he's found a grocery store that will fulfill his food needs without him having to go into the store. We all found his birthday wishes to our mother very special and we're oh so proud of her late in life ministry to various crazies and homeless. Our family is very afflicted with mental disorders so she is uniquely equiped to visit with the un-housed and those on psych wards.

NOW...the sads...the wife of our close friend has been diagnosed with an ultra rare form of cancer and she's only 33....the Mayo clinic has only seen about 76 of this type of cancer so far and it's rather aggressive....and to make matters even better her oldest son who's 15 has a mood disorder - of course he does, he's from Km@- I mentioned to her it might be a good thing that I don't cry because everyone has been crying around her or not looking her in the eye and then I ended up shutting down and getting morose...could only do an artificially pleasant expression on my face at best.

Damn.

Imagine you're Siri Keaton

Don't have to.

I am Siri Keaton

and I love this place because it's home and it's shown me so much but it's freakin' hard and it never stops hurting.

Semi Annual Commute

I don't normally travel at this time of year so the mountain/glacier vista on our regular route looked more magestic than anything I've ever seen...though maybe it's on par with the mountains along the Skeena in November. It was like flying over some fantasy realm of impossibly high mountains layered in ice and snow. The plane flew at 22000 feet which may be lower than I've experienced before, giving us a more impressive perspective.

I was returning from my mother's 80th birthday which went well thank goodness. I arrived a couple of days early to help a sister-in-law with the preparations for a 90 person dinner. Wasn't quite able to keep it from turning into a Cinderella scenario but I hope I smoothed over some issues and lightened the load a bit.

First Day o' Spring

I'm standing near the 12 minute tree on the liquid silver Kitimat River rippling southward with Clague mountain in the distance.

The Twelve Minute Tree is roughly that length of time away from town at my present driving speed but it was originally the Seventeen Minute Tree about 8 years back when I drove a clunky old, white cargo van.

Farewell #3...#4? Losing Track

(At each farewell I've attended we've been saying good-bye to creative people. I don't like this particular exodus - and at the risk of sounding a bit dramatic I feel bereft and abandoned. It will be interesting to see if anything ever comes from our Kitimatian Diaspora.
Last night we crowded into Jason and Delina's for one last visit before they move down to Abbotsford. I hadn't been to their place before so Jason showed me his main set-up where he composes his music. Amazing stuff...
Now I'm just waiting for him to create the score for some incredible movie.
Look up Jason Skilton on myspace or paywhatyouwantonline.com and give him a listen. (can't seem to copy and paste a link today)

Peace, Man

Stumbled upon a collaborative painting situation at the library today and the programmer in charge -Denise over there - pressed me 'into service' so I decorated a P, then painted bugs 'n flowers in the corner. And I put a spider and web inside the P. Didn't know how people would react to that but one of the girls noticed and pronounced it 'cool'.

Denise (an artist) will be moving to Fort Mac with husband in the very near future. Another creative person gone. *pouty face*
Last week I found out that the tap teacher is heading there at the end of school, while a week before that saw our amazing Live Theatre technical director leave us for Grande Prairie.
Alberta should have to reimburse us somehow...

Visit To Sammy's

The bff and I were showing off a totem pole out at the village this afternoon to her social worker practicum co-worker when we noticed renowned carver & jewellery maker Sammy Robinson waving us into his carving shop. We ended up enjoying an extensive tour and 40 minute chat about various things. I'm happy to see that he is back to carving wood - repetitive strain in his hands forced him give it up for several years but afforded the opportunity to take up carving in gold and silver instead and sell to movie folk!- he's enjoying some impressive professional success at the moment which is wonderful because...

...on the personal front he's taken several extreme hits and probably has several more in the near future. The carving above is in memory of one of his daughters who passed away just a couple of weeks ago, completely unexpectedly.

Here's what grabbed me more than anything else though...these are the remaining pieces from a chess set Sammy carved from antler, bone and seal's teeth...right up TwinB's alley!
...wishing you less 'interesting times' Sammy...

Babes In Kindergarten

One of the local schools has a large (for Kindergarten) class of 21 students and the differences in development and maturation are staggering. I encountered the most primitive images I've seen in 17 years of going from school to school...like the rainbow above.

My first encounter with them involved paint. The plan was to paint a pale bluish background and when dry, go back in and fill it with snowmen and kids and whatever caught their fancy. (I've managed to get this age to do just that many times before!) Alas...many of the kids had not yet been through the 'hey I mixed all the paint together and got a mud puddle!' stage so I had to quickly think up a plan B where we retired the paint, got out the crayons and then drew images that could be cut out and later glued onto the backgrounds.

This obviously is the other end of the spectrum. There was one table in particular where the kids were extremely mature for K and produced some amazing pieces.

What a mix...