Thursday, or Thereabouts - June 27, 2013

The Last Day of School

© leo tomić - fotolia.com 

Woo Hoo! Remember the thrill? I sure do. Oh the joy of it all: ripping the paper off text books, coverings that had been so carefully cut, folded, applied and decorated ten months earlier; triumphantly handing the naked books back to the teacher; clearing out my desk only to discover that crumpled up test stuffed way in the back corner, the one with the big red "D" on it, then tossing the offensive paper in garbage can - no way that was ever coming home; gathering up the standard issue pink workbooks (Pink? What were they thinking??), some of my art work (only some because art was never my forte), a few remaining coloured pencils (a full set of twelve never survived ten months of gruelling work), and last by no means least, my prized possession, a wooden pencil box with a lid that slid open to reveal four bright yellow HB pencils and one slender white pen with blue lettering, "Etobicoke Board of Education". All got stuffed into a bag for homecoming, with one addition - a white envelope containing The Report Card.

I recall that one year, the teacher called each one of us to her desk to receive the envelope. She whispered a comment and the room number for next year's class, "Well done April. Room eleven." It was a mixed message. I was already in Room 11, in fact I spent grades 4, 5 and 6 in Room 11 - the annual shuffling of rooms and teachers didn't get me anywhere it seemed. No matter, the last thing on my mind as I dashed out the school doors that day was next year's class. A vast expanse of uninterrupted playtime stretched out before me and September was nowhere to be seen on my radar.

I'll tell you what else was not on my radar way back when, Canada Day, or as it was then known, Dominion Day. Seems more attention was paid to Victoria Day, the long weekend in May. "The twenty-fourth of May is firecracker day," was the schoolyard chant. But all that began to change with 1967 and the celebration of our 100th birthday as a nation. From the lighting of the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill to Expo 67 to Bobby Gimby's "Ca-na-da", we all sang and celebrated.


Fast forward a few years, like over 40 of them, to today, and it's once again the last day of school. There is no desk for me to clear out, no text books to return, no wooden pencil case and thankfully no report card! But the strawberries are ripe for the picking and the Canada Day long weekend sits on the doorstep ready to kick off summer with a celebration of all things Canadian. It's not just a single day anymore but three days (and more in some locations) of festivities and fireworks across the country. It's a time for me to shake off the scales of cynicism and complaint and enjoy the privilege of living in this great land.


We're not perfect; we're not without problems; we've got critical issues and controversies that need tending, but not on this long weekend. This last day of school, this long weekend, I'm thrilled to be a part of the colourful mosaic that is Canada.

Be safe. Be happy. Be grateful.

(all photos unless otherwise noted: © April Hoeller)
 

Monday Moanings - June 24, 2013

Summer time and the living is...

I have grown into a summer time whiner. I don't like the bugs; I don't like the heat; and I really don't like the humidity. I don't like having to keep the shades drawn all day to keep out the sun. I don't like freezing in an over air conditioned shop then being suffocated in the outside air. Whine, Whine, Whine.

But here's the good news: more than the flowers and veggies, which I do appreciate and enjoy especially if someone else tends them, I really like, love in fact, a good summer time thunderstorm, a ring tailed snorter. Nothing can beat that noisy, flashy, splash of refreshment. This 2013 premiere spell of 'triple H' weather (hazy, hot and humid) holds the promise of a few good thunder boomers and I'm primed and ready.

As a kid I loved the summer. Happy days of wind in my face bike riding, and hot days cooled in the backyard pool made summer an absolute delight. We didn't have a heater so a pool freshly filled in June began at 16C (or less!) and crawled its way to a blistering 23 by mid August. Those were the days of Fahrenheit, so "Arthur" our pool thermometer actually registered 74. One banner year I recall ''Arthur' made it all the way to 78F. In the early part of the season, while Dad was at work, Mom and I added buckets of hot water to the pool. Dad came home, splashed his hand in the pool and announced, "It's warming up nicely!" Mom and I just smiled. It was our little secret.

I had another summer secret. I hated thunderstorms; mostly they scared the living day lights out of me, especially the night time ones. They lit up my bedroom, casting scary shadows across the walls. Worse than the lightning was the thunder. Those ear splitting, room shaking, gut vibrating booms were worse than my worst nightmare. I recall lying in my dark bedroom, hands cupped close to my ears. A flash of lightning gave life to the shadows and I began a countdown, my small voice quavering in the dark, "One and one thousand, two and one thousand, three and one thousand, four and one thousand..." until the crash of thunder stopped the count. Each group of four in the countdown, that is every four seconds, between lightning seen and thunder heard measured one mile of distance to the storm centre, or so my Dad the weatherman said. As the number of seconds between flash and bang decreased, fear increased - exponentially. I never cried out - at least not that I remember. I took it to be a badge of courage to make it through the storm (there's got to be a morning after?). Instead I counted and shuddered, and counted and moaned, and counted and whimpered, drenched in sweat under blankets and pillow. The end of the world was at hand.

Small vestiges of  these terrors of the night remain. In the dark bedtime hours, a low rumble in the distance rouses me. A flash of light dances around the room, confirming the source - a thunderstorm is coming - and the familiar countdown sequence so deeply imprinted on my being begins again. My gut clenches involuntarily in memory of stormy nights past. Most often I just roll over and fall back to sleep but every once in a while the storm is big enough, flashy enough, noisy enough to fully waken the old fear machine. I tug the pillow tightly around my ears, stretch out my leg until toes touch a sleeping husband for reassurance that I am not alone. In the darkness a whimper is heard. Surely not I? Hot panting breath hits my not quite buried face, then a cold nose nudges my cheek followed by a heavy paw on my arm. "Just thought you should know mummy," eighty pounds of hyper-vigilant canine warns, "the end of the world truly is at hand."

Thursday, or Thereabouts - June 20, 2013

A travelogue day - in M'dina, Malta

Malta seems a bit of an odd duck in the middle of the Mediterranean. Its closest neighbour is Sicily, some 92km to the north and Tunisia lies quite a ways to the west of the island nation. The native tongue is a curious blend of ancient influences - Phoenician and Arabic. Over its 5000+ year history Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Berbers, Turks, Spaniards and even the British have laid claim to the land. Sitting in the cathedral square, one hears the strange language yet sees distinctively English red phone booths and round post boxes.

The greatest influence on the island came from the Crusaders in the middle ages. In 1530 the Spanish gave Malta to the Knights of the order of St. John of Jerusalem. These Crusaders fortified and built up the cities using the natural sand coloured limestone with its characteristic yellow-beige tone.
 
After the ship docked in Valetta, we struck out for M’dina, the jewel in the medieval crown, an enclosed town that has been preserved, restored, and  maintained to its 15th century state. A few very wealthy families still call the narrow winding cobble stone streets, home. As we walked through this Crusaders' stronghold on a gorgeous sunny May 1st of this year, I was drawn to the door knockers and bell pulls. 

From simple to ornate, welcoming to foreboding, I have never seen such an array of door hardware in one place. 

Have a look:

There is of course much more to M'dina than door knockers, but I'm saving that for another time.

Enjoy!

Monday Moanings - June 17, 2013

It's been 23 days since I returned from a month in Europe. The jet lag is long gone along with the doldrums of vacation withdrawal and general fatigue. The travel gear - luggage and backpacks, first aid kit and drug box, voltage converters, power supplies, umpteen chargers for the umpteen electronic devices (notebook, tablet, laptop, cell phones, 3 cameras), backup chargers, all the doodads and thingamajigs that have become travel essentials - all of these and the passports (sigh) have been tucked away to await the next adventure.

All that remains to be attended to are the photographs, all 6827 of them! Ye Gads! How can there possibly be that many? Two photographers and three cameras is the beginning of an answer, electronics is the rest of it.

The memories are priceless but are all those images, each and every one of them, essential to the story? The task of purging and cataloguing is daunting but already nearly 900 have been deleted and the recycle bin has been emptied, so no second thoughts are possible. These rejects were the easy edits; the blurred, the multiples occasioned by shooting in burst mode and the "feet-ures" captured when the shutter button was pressed while putting the camera away. There are still 5928 pictures and that's still an appalling number - especially to one who once worked with film.

I was so careful back in the day. Slide film was too expensive to waste, even if I was able to buy 6 rolls of 36 exposure with processing included. I took time to set up each shot peering through the viewfinder for wires coming out of a person's ears and poles growing out the top of heads, and I fiddled with the aperture and/or shutter speed. Then and only then, I held my breath and pressed the button. It might be a month or even longer before "36" appeared in the little exposure counter and I clicked off the last shot, then carefully rewound the film back into the canister. Three days, five, or even a whole week passed before I got to see the results of my judicious compositions. Often I was disappointed. On a good day there might be as many as 25 well exposed but otherwise ordinary pictures and maybe, just maybe 3 exceptional images. In 26 years of film, 6733 slides made it into the catalogue. Perhaps another 1500 got tossed.

The age of film ended for me on Christmas Day 2001 with the arrival of my first digital camera (Canon PowerShot A20), a gift from my beloved. In the twelve years since then, 47,000+ images have been amassed. I have no idea how many got tossed. It's mind boggling, truly mind boggling! But are the pictures any better? I'd like to think that over the years I have learnt a thing or two about photography and so yes, the pictures are better, or at least some of them are better. I still cling to the adage a venerable photographer, my Dad, once said to me, "If you can't take a good picture with a Brownie Box Camera, a Nikon isn't going to help you."

With all the high powered editing software now at my fingertips, it's entirely possible for me to engineer a perfectly acceptable image from a mediocre one. And therein lies the problem for me. While my finger hangs over the delete key I hear the 'hang on to everything' photo enthusiast say, "You know, with a little bit of work this picture can be stunning." It's trap! "A little bit of work" can amount to ten minutes; multiply that by 5928 images from our latest adventure and it adds up to four months of eight hour days - FOUR times longer than the vacation was!!!! YIKES.

Clearly the delete key is in for a workout. Best get at it.
I'll let you know how it goes, but in the mean time here's a taste of Europe 2013:

Thursday, or Thereabouts - June 13, 2013

I had to make a change in the lineup for my Thursday posts. "Thermals" had had an acceptable beginning, but dissatisfaction with its performance grew in my gut week by week and for the past two weeks quite frankly, the player has been on waivers. I put sleeplessness to good use last night and bounced replacements back and forth in my head much like the puck in the hockey game I stayed up to watch. Like that Stanley Cup Final, this game went on for far too long before the winning goal was scored and "Or Thereabouts" finally lit up the lights.

Now what about that real hockey game - my oh my, what a game! As exciting as it was, as great as it was, I do hope the rest of the games between the Hawks and Bruins don't go all the way to a third overtime, but whatever happens, I'll be watching.

I'm loving this match up between Chicago and Boston, two teams from the 'Original Six' of the NHL I knew as a child. Then as now,  I was a Chicago Blackhawks fan through and through. The likes of Bobby Hull, Stan Makita, Chico Maki, Pierre Pilote and goalie Glenn Hall filled my dreams of triumph and greatness.

The best Christmas of my childhood, the most memorable was the one (1962 or '63) when I got not only a hockey stick and gloves, but also an official Blackhawks sweater (they really were sweaters in those days, not jerseys). I well recall the surprise, the absolute joy that rocketed through my body when I tore open the package from Auntie Lilian, to discover not yet another dress (blech!), but the red and black wool of the hockey sweater. I was in seventh heaven and couldn't wait to get out on the street for a game of road hockey with the boy across the street. He'd be Johnny Bower to my Bobby Hull, or Stan Makita.

I had hockey dreams. There was just one problem. I couldn't skate. Try as I might I could not master those bright white slender figure skates. They tripped me up every time; the damn picks dug in and sent my flying far too many times. Back then, figure skates were the only option for girls, after all every Canadian girl on the ice wanted to be Barbara Ann Scott (1948 Olympic champion), didn't she? Well no, at least not me. I recall my Dad considered buying a pair of real hockey skates like his, but Mom wouldn't hear of it - those were boys' skates!

No matter, road hockey worked the magic and in winter on our quiet street there was often enough snow pack to use my real NHL puck and stick handle my way up the road rink to face Johnny Bower between the posts.

She shoots! She Scores!

The crowd went wild.

And that's it for this Thursday or Thereabouts. Just one more thing...

Go Hawks! Go!

Monday Moanings - June 10, 2013

Oh woe is me, woe I say!
I have managed to fritter away some seven hours today. Perhaps "fritter" is a little harsh - enjoying a good healthy breakfast and then heading off to a Curves workout in town were surely commendable pursuits. So let's award two hours for good behaviour. Now what about those other five? Well okay then, "fritter" is actually a fair word...

Fuelling this wasteful behaviour was, and is, my complete inability to make a decision, to simply choose a topic for this blogpost and then apply my backside firmly to a chair and write it. I was clobbered by some kind of tsunami as a sea of hands rose up in my classroom of topics each one demanding my attention. I'll have you know though, that I've been doing the 'backside in chair' part very well! The World Wide Web is such a great outlet for displacement activity.

Finally my inner critic goaded me with enough guilt that I just picked up my pen, grabbed my journal and started to write...

Almost all of my writing begins with pen on paper, as opposed to fingers on keyboard. There is a highly favoured writing instrument for this activity; a Parker 'Sonnet' fountain pen made in France, that my beloved bought for me some fifteen years ago. The perfect weight of the pen in my hand, the fine balance; the perfect tapered thickness of barrel between my fingers, the lush coolness; the satin smooth flow of specially blended ink accompanied by ever so soft scratching sounds as letters become words at the tip of a golden nib; all work together to make writing the most natural, most soothing, most pleasurable thing in the world.

The fountain pen comes with a history and character that only some papers can bear. The paper must be smooth enough to allow the pen to move unimpeded across the page, thick enough to resist bleed through and plentiful enough to encourage whole truths.

Maybe next time I'll be able to call on one of those urgent, waving hands in my writing ideas class, but for now I'll just let a fountain pen caress paper and enjoy what happens.

Thursday Thermals - June 6, 2013

My idea of the perfect summer day includes sunshine and temps between 20 and 23C. It's all of 12 outside my door and a very wet 12 at that, so something warm and fuzzy would truly be appreciated.

And here he is:

This is Schwartz, our intrepid travelling companion. He's logged a lot of miles in my backpack and in the more casual fanny pack. Make no mistake this bear is not just a cute fuzzy face!  He has a job to do, two in fact. First up he is the scale prop for our photos - with him in the picture, perspective comes into clearer focus. He never protests being pulled out of an overstuffed fanny pack to sit up happily in any location, even the high ones.

Job Two is that of Bon Vivant, the bear of good cheer, always ready to lead the way to the pub or cafe. He has no particular favourite. He's happy with a pint of the local brew, red or white wine, espresso, macchiato, or latte. In the last month while touring the Italy and the Adriatic, he developed a taste for grappa, limoncello and slivovitz, though not all at the same time!
And here are the pictures to prove it:

Cheers!

Monday Moanings - June 3, 2013

I'm baaaaaaack!
Actually I've been home for over a week now, but you know how it goes - heart and soul lag far behind the return of luggage and body, especially when the absence has been as long as a month. Jet lag plus vacation withdrawal plus plain old fatigue scored the hat trick against the Home Coming Team and did so for five days straight. By Friday the Team managed to make an appearance and then went on to rack up enough momentum to reassert supremacy. Phew! It is good to be home!

So here I am ready to pen Monday Moanings again. I don't suppose it's significant that just as I've gotten my act together there has been a major power outage in my neighbourhood this morning? Has news of my return to the blogosphere caused an overload? And is it protest or welcome?? Imagination is such fun and also a great diversion from actual writing...

Every time I venture to faraway places I am reminded of just how fortunate I am to live where and when I do; I am reminded that my small corner, the place I call home, is just a very tiny speck of dust (though I do hope a sparkling one) on the world stage; I am reminded that joy and wonder are not only elsewhere, but also all around me, if I would but look up, around and inside the nooks and crannies of an ordinary day at home.

I had a sensational time away (more about that in the coming weeks) with only one day out of thirty that was a washout. I got cold, wet feet looking for my "two gentlemen of Verona" but when I took a moment on a Veronese street corner to look out from under my rain gear, there stood the man who has been by my side  since 1975 - one gentleman of Stouffville in Verona. Perfect!

More stories to come of my travels. It is indeed good to be home.
Cheers!