Canadian Cultural Icons -- Tom Thomson

I was at Sand Bay, off Georgian Bay, off Lake Huron, last week, just outside of Parry Sound. I don’t know if a sound is a Canadian geographic term or if it’s general – a sound is a large, wide body of water that connects two other bodies of water – in this case, Georgian Bay and Five Mile Bay. There’s Parry Island on the east side of Georgian Bay, and the Sound is north of it, and Five Mile Bay is south of it and feeds back into Georgian Bay. A little confusing.

We went on a couple of picnics a short boat ride from my sister-in-law’s cottage. On Picnic Island, where else? Here’s a couple of pictures I took at Picnic Island. We are on the Canadian Shield here, an enormous slab of granite that includes Greenland, most of eastern Canada from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, and the Adirondack Mountains are part of it too. In the Pleistocene era giant continental ice sheets 1,500 to 3,000 metres thick receded over it – they carried off most of the topsoil, exposing the bedrock and carving lakes and rivers into the rock. There are grooves cut in the bare rock, left by those ice sheets. I just love it there – for me, it’s another one of those “thin places” that Ellie told us about recently.

I was taking pictures of those trees, and trying to remember a poem our Grade 8 teacher, Mrs. Dyment, had us memorize. All I could remember was the line, “and the pine trees leaned one way”. Thank heavens for Google. Here it is (and by the way, I didn’t understand this when I was 13, and it reinforces my view that children should not be made to memorize adult poetry like this or “In Flanders Fields” or prayers like The 23^rd Psalm and the Our Father):

The Lonely Land

Cedar and jagged fir

uplift sharp barbs

against the grey and cloud-piles sky

and in the bay

blown spume and windrift

and thin, bitter spray

snap

at the whirling sky;

and the pine trees lean one way.

A wild duck

calls to her mate

and the ragged

and passionate tones

stagger and fall,

and recover,

and stagger and fall,

on these stones –

are lost

in the lapping of water

on the smooth, flat stones.

This is a beauty

of dissonance,

this resonance

of stony strand,

this smoky cry

curled over a black pine

like a broken

and wind-battered branch,

when the wind bends

the tops of the pines,

and curdles the sky

from the north.

This is the beauty

of strength

broken by strength

and still strong.

A.J.M. Smith

It also made me think about Tom Thomson, member of the Group of Seven, a Canadian painter who loved and painted and died in northern Ontario. He’s a Canadian cultural icon for certain sure. I think if you went to school here in the ‘50’s through the ‘70’s, you’d be able to look at a painting and guess by the style it was by Thomson, even if you hadn’t seen it before. Beautiful paintings. A fisherman and canoeist. Thomson’s death adds to his legendary status. He went canoeing in Algonquin Park one day, and was never seen again. The official verdict was accidental death by drowning, but there have been rumours of arguments and speculation that it was homicide, ever since. That's not what matters, though, the paintings are.

A Big Adventure

I’ve been so busy, I haven’t blogged, and I’m having trouble keeping up with everyone else. I’ve been doing housework-for-hire, to supplement my income. Who’d have guessed I’d LIKE it? But I do. Part of it is, I have clients I like, and they both need and appreciate the work. And part of it is, I’m good at it. And another part is, I work hard and really earn my money. That makes me feel happy. It also takes up time, and when I am home, I’m very tired.

On Monday, I had an adventure. A friend of mine lives with his parents. They bought that house a few years ago from a man who owned a wolf. He’d bought it illegally as a puppy, and as an adult, the wolf wouldn’t get in a car, so couldn’t move. Plus, the man was moving into the city. Now my friend and his family own a 12-year old wolf.

It’s illegal to own them. When my friend inherited him, his family obtained the necessary permit. I read on Wiki that the life expectancy for them in the wild is six to ten years, and in captivity, up to double that. This wolf is showing his age. His hindquarters and back legs are stiff and slow; he’s graying around the muzzle; there’s a few bald patches.

I fell in love with him. None of the hands here are mine – another friend took pictures of me and the wolf on his phone, and doesn’t think he knows how to forward them. I was too dumb to hand my camera to anyone else. I was awe-struck, really. I sat on the ground in front of him, and held his head (it’s huge) in my hands and rubbed his head and ears. He was pushing his left ear into my hand, the way dogs do. I didn't want to wash my hands, because I could smell him -- did wash before supper though. I’d have stayed for hours, if I could – I’ve been invited back.

More later, I promise.

Kol Adonai ...

Ascribe to the LORD, O divine beings,
Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name:
bow down to the LORD, majestic in holiness.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD, over the mighty waters.

The voice of the LORD is power;
the voice of the LORD is majesty;
the voice of the LORD breaks cedars;
the LORD shatters the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the LORD kindles flames of fire;
The voice of the LORD convulses the wilderness;
the LORD convulses the wilderness of Kadesh.

The voice of the LORD causes hinds to calve,
and strips forests bare;
while in His temple all say, “Glory!”
The LORD sat enthroned at the Flood;
the LORD sits enthroned, king forever.

May the LORD grant strength to His people;
may the LORD bestow on His people wellbeing.

--Psalm 29

Go over to JohnieB’s place, to see His flames of fire – breathtaking.

Lucy, You Have Some 'Splainin To Do

In the comments thread on the Anne Murray video, Doxy talks about having her hair cut by the woman who goes on tour to do Annie’s. Then there was a little talk about hair styles. When I was away for the weekend a couple of weeks ago, I did some image-changing. Hence the new photo on the profile – I love the red hair, and the orange fingernails didn’t last. Too much maintenance. My toenails are still orange though.

There’s a lot I like about that picture – including that I took it in the bathroom mirror at my mother-in-law’s. So much easier than setting the timer and trying to sit and look natural for 10 seconds. And it’s fun of itself.

It’s also fun for me to look at a photograph of myself and just like it, the minute I see it, without letting The Critic open her mouth and spoil it for me.

Alice Walker and The Color Purple -- Boy, It's Hard to Remember to Spell American

This is so cool. It is grey, chilly, damp today in southern Ontario. It’s not supposed to be, at the end of May, but it is. And The Weather Network SAID it was 19C today – but it sure didn’t feel like it. I felt about appropriate to the weather, and I took my camera out to walk the South Shore Trail and see if there were any trilliums left. If not, what there is. I didn’t make it to the trail though – when I woke up this morning I got a bad cramp in my left leg, and it took me a while to realize it was still bugging me. All I knew was, walking was uncomfortable.

The only cheerful thing was a house with wisteria. Not the deep purple kind I love best, but wisteria nevertheless. First I’ve seen this year. Somehow, as I walked into the village and back, I started to think of Shug Avery telling Miss Celie in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple that she thinks God just wants to be admired. Then I started to notice how many purple flowers there are today – lilacs, irises, periwinkle, violets, pansies, columbines, wisteria, tulips. I ran out of memory or battery on the camera before I got to the lilacs – got to smell them though.

I started taking pictures of all the ones I could. The woman at the wisteria house came home from work while I was taking pictures – I asked her if she minded, and she said no. She said, they’d never been as good as they are this year, and she doesn’t know why the one branch in particular was so spectacular. The woman at the Brew-Your-Own-Wine-And-Beer store came out and asked if I was a professional photographer, and I said no, just taking the pictures to make myself happy, and did she mind? Nope. She even offered to come and take MY picture in HER garden!

Then a man with a dog stopped to talk, while I was taking pictures of the hidden purple pansies – it wasn’t his house, it was his friend’s. He said her garden is whimsical. He lives around the corner. His wife had passed away last summer, after more than 40 years. He’s a photographer, and gave me his card so I could see some of his work online. Wow! He’s a PHOTOGRAPHER. Me – I’m making myself happy and learning how to use my new camera. We talked about living alone after decades of marriage, and the difficulties of cooking and eating alone. He has a very nice dog, too.

Then I came home and SAW my pictures. They made me very happy. I wanted to share more of them than I can easily on the blog, and I wanted them big, on a black ground. There was no help for it – had to be PowerPoint. I hate PowerPoint presentations at seminars, in school, in church … And, I’ve never done one. But I DID today, and I did it myself, without asking for help. Then I wanted to upload it here, and found out that’s not as easy as picking up a video from YouTube. I followed links to several sites that are supposed to help you make your PPT files embeddable – one’s not taking new subscriber’s, one didn’t work, one I’d have to start from scratch … Ugh. But I was happy, excited and persistent, and VIOLA!!! Here they are. Well, some of them. I took about 60 – I’m not making you watch them ALL. I won’t be test-driving this til I’ve published – if the pages advance every five seconds like I set them, it should take about a minute.

So -- I met three new people and one very nice dog. I learned two new things. I not only stopped to admire the colour purple, I went looking for it, and I'm sharing. I don’t think God’s gonna be pissed off with us today.

I think it pisses God off - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: I think it pisses God off

Only goodness and steadfast love shall pursue me ...

Yesterday afternoon, I went and did whatever the heck I liked. Who’da ever thunk of that?

I took my new camera, and went down to Cootes Paradise. When Captain Coote first saw this wetland, sometime in the 16^th Century, he said it was Paradise. It’s not quite as paradisic as once it was, but there’s a concerted effort to restore what can be restored – safeguard the land from further urban encroachment, guard the native Carolinian forest, remove the carp some fools released in there years ago, and restock with the type of fish that belong there. And they dredged out a lot of toxic-waste-filled muck from the old harbour, and are assisting the wetland to reclaim some of the harbour as well. There’s still shipping, but there’s also parkland, cafés, and a groomed trail.

The first two pictures are at the western entrance to the trail, Princess Point. My feet were in the same place, just shifted from an east view, with the pavement, to a north view, with the geese. You can just see some fence along the top of the hill on the east view – behind that is one of the busiest highways in southern Ontario. There’s a picture of Cootes Paradise next – across the water is preserved forest, and the far side of that forest was right behind my backyard when I was growing up. It was our playground.

Then a water picture, with a bridge on the horizon. That is the Skyway Bridge, beyond it is the western tip of Lake Ontario. A lot of Great Lakes shipping goes through here, and right behind me as I took the picture, a major rail line. The last picture is of a four-man rowing team, practicing. Behind them, you can see some of the cafes and the museum at the eastern end of the trail. There’s park there, and the shipping harbour on the far side of that. I didn’t take pictures of that for you; you can all imagine it.

What I wanted yesterday was the water. Water’s good for me; so is rock, big rock, but there’s not the right kind close by. I did preach on the 23^rd Psalm on Sunday – in the Jewish Publication Society’s Hebrew-English Tanakh, it’s translated, “He leads me to water in places of repose; he restores my life.” I walked almost 10km yesterday on that excursion; took 46 photographs. Bird – you might get birds pretty soon – there are LOTS of Canada geese, and I got a nice one of a female American goldfinch. I sat on a bench and looked out at Captain Cootes’ idea of paradise for a while yesterday, where I took the two water pictures – and got my soul a little restored.

Sunday Afternoon Expedition