A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space. -Gloria Steinem, activist, editor (b. 25 Mar 1934)
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| Photo: Andrew Newman |
CORVID-19 has really "thrown" a monkey wrench into everyone's lives!
Hello Snow Birds! How are you faring? Will you return as you usually do or has the changed situation altered these plans? Have not heard a peep from Gilliana and Phillipo so not sure what they are doing about return from Sedona. On a much happier note, really enjoyed the clip of the pets and their owners so thanks for that. In a similar vein just wanted to let you know that The Burns Street Bistro is releasing a series of audio-books for any who have run out of reading material, available, free, at better email addresses everywhere! Must away as Lady Dar is just about to make gluten-free pancakes for her over-worked, under-appreciated house-boy and common drudge! Fondestos from her to you both. Stay well. Cheers, Patrizzio!
Katie Maness Hansford with Chloe Alexis Dunn, 25 March 2010 Katie, look at Em’s!!! So little 🥰❤️
Hello Sedona Snow Birds! How are you faring? Will you return as you usually do or has the changed situation altered these plans? Have not heard a peep so thought I'd say hello. Think I'll give
my legs a rest from riding today and will "attack" our bedroom window and the front picture window. Latter doesn't
seem too, too bad until the sun shines and then you realize how dirty
it has become over winter! Also, want to split more firewood and spend
some time on my shoulder exercises. Always something to keep one busy
here at The Burns Street Bistro! Must away to mash the turnip I've had
on the boil. Have really enjoyed this root vegetable over last few
months. Was a staple on the Prairies, and elsewhere, of course, and I
wish my version tasted quite as delicious as my grandmother's and
mother's dishes. Still, seems to receive a passing grade from Lady Dar so I must be doing something right! Fondestos and Cheers, Patrizzio!
Hello Wherever You are, in self isolation, we trust, Sandee and Arv!
If
you've been in contact with either Trump or Boris, lately, [Thanks for the alerting us to this medial breakthrough!], this clip
will tell you if you have contracted the COVID Virus and what to do! Cheers, Patrizzio!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYk8dY2xrNo&feature=youtu.be
Hello Dunbar Self Isolators! Trust you are both well. Quite enjoyed both clips, so thanks for sending them along. I plan to forward Israeli mom's rant to Dawn and Gerry Martin as they are self-quarantining, in Vancouver, as I scribe, as they returned from Israel a week or so ago. Closer to home I heard on the news, an hour or so ago, that a someone at Broadway Pentecostal Lodge, where Annie lived for almost five years, was just diagnosed with the CORVID-19 virus. Yikes, pretty close to home as Flamin' and Sarge live but two buildings away and another friend, Joanne, who lives there as well, is currently is self quarantine, having just returned from Mesa where she was visiting her brother. With respect to us, here in Penticton, so far everyone is well although Lady Dar was having difficulty breathing over last few days. Quite worrying of course. She had a FaceTime consultation with her family doctor, [Chloë's/Rowan's as well), yesterday and she prescribed a new ventilator for her asthma and this seem to have done the trick as she is much improved. [On her second Zoom conference call of the day as I scribe. First, this morning was with United Church, (300 participants), and now, this evening, with her book club, (6 readers), here in town. Lady Dar,
with a glass of a 2013 Noble Ridge Meritage, 13.9%, (delish as I'm
having some too!), as she book clubs virtually! She's been rearranging our "wine
cellar" to make room for latest releases and so we are finding stuff we
didn't even know we owned!
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| Coxcomb |
Georgia O'Keeffe was twenty-eight when she arrived in Canyon, Texas in September to become the sole teacher in the college's art department, responsible for classes in design, costuming, and interior decoration.
O'Keeffe had lived in the Panhandle before. In 1912, when she was twenty-four and no longer able to afford to live in New York or continue her studies at the Art Students League, she had boarded a train for far-distant Amarillo to become the drawing supervisor for the town's public schools. She was something of an apparition in Amarillo -- a lean young woman, her hair pulled straight back to showcase her stark and striking features. She left Texas in 1918, but the color and scale and isolation of the Panhandle seems never to have left her consciousness, and the abstract watercolors she made there -- a painting called Sunrise, and a series known as Light Coming on the Plains, are as much about the awakening of a soul as they are about the dawning of a new day.
Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, Stephen Harrigan, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2019
I just started an account with Zoom as I had read in Emeriti Newsletter that Don Fisher had done so. [If you read the issue in question, I signed us up to help out, if needed, other alumni who live hereabouts and might require help with grocery shopping, picking up prescriptions and the like.] Am hoping he and Sue will visit this coming summer, [They have an outstanding house exchange here.], if the world is still around by then. Trump seems determined to see that it isn't. Did you postpone your trip to Edmonton, Jo-Anne? Presume so.
[
The black neighborhoods of Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s were teeming with teenaged musical talent—Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Otis Williams and others. Most passed through the doors of the 4,500 seat New Bethel Baptist Church, pastored by the "flashy bon vivant" Reverend C.L. Franklin—so high-profile that he merited mention in Time magazine. In the decades leading up to the 1950s, more blacks from the South had poured into Detroit—filling churches like Reverend Franklin's—than any other Northern city, seeking the solid-paying jobs of the automobile industry. The young singing star of Reverend Franklin's church, a touring gospel star by the time she was 14 and an object of fascination for teens in the neighborhood, was his daughter Aretha. While Aretha was discovering her vocal capacities on the altar of the New Bethel Baptist Church, the surrounding Detroit neighborhood was humming with music of all sorts. Otis Williams recalls hearing wonderful things about that little Franklin girl who had people in awe of her voice when she sang on Sundays. In 1964, Williams became world-famous as one of the Temptations. A skinny little neighborhood girl named Diane Ross joined two school friends, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, and together they became the Supremes. (When she became famous, Ross changed her name from Diane to Diana.) Friends of the Franklins, the Robinsons, had a little boy named William, and he was interested in becoming a pop singer. Everyone called William by his nickname, 'Smokey.' Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul, Mark Bego, Skyhorse, 2012.]
Did you know Sarika Bose! [Her mother taught in Asian Studies and her dad was a prof in the English Department at SFU, although both retired for many years now.] Sarika, teaching herself in UBC's English Department, has been very involved with the Faculty Association for the last 6 years, and in CAUT's Executive for the last 3 years. Have reconnected with her lately. We first met when she worked in Circulation in Main Library before Learning Commons was to come into being. She is in the exciting process of building a lane house behind her parents' place, on 10th, somewhere near Balaclava, if I recall correctly, to match their craftsman-style home. I'm sure it will be wonderful as she has the same sense of fashion and design as does Lady Dar!!! Once Zoom book club is over we'll watch more of Season 3 of Babylon Berlin. Do you know it? Highly recommend series. Fondestos from Her Imperiousness, in absentia, to both. Stay well. Cheers, Patrizzio! PS: With your recent jet-setting, if you have been in contact with either Boris or Donald the last
snap will alert you to an incredible medical breakthrough!
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| Spring by J. Mazzanovich |
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.
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| Rachel Carson |
Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.
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Story of Minerva - The Muses Showing Minerva Hippocrene Waters of the River that Brings Out Pegasus, 1696
Art: René-Antoine Houasse
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There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example -- where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962
LOL! Well, I'm pretty exhausted with all the student emails I'm getting, and all the tech stuff that isn't working and is having to be redone. I just want to sleep.
But today I did go out for a short walk in the neighbourhood with my parents to look at the spring gardens in the neighbourhood. I think I said I was staying with them till my little lane house is built. I'm trying to plan how to make the new, reduced garden work.
[Wadjet-Bastet, with a lioness head, the solar disk, and the cobra that represents Wadjet]
Glad you could go on your bike ride. The lockdown in India means police are going after anyone on the street with sticks, and knocking cyclists and motorbike riders off their seats unless they have specific curfew passes. And police are patrolling the streets of Vienna, fining people for unnecessary trips out of their properties. I'm really hoping people will truly follow social distancing rules here so it doesn't come to the situations in India, Austria Italy etc.
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| Image: insima/Adobe Stock |
A senior, senior citizen, with an oxygen tank, tried to knock me off my bike a few days ago but I was able to out-pedal her motorized wheel-chair, came up behind her and drove her into the lake! She survived her underwater ordeal as tube from oxygen cylinder keep her alive until ambulance arrived. All the people on the boardwalk cheered me as apparently she had been driving into pedestrians for weeks! Local RCMP officers now give me a wide berth!!! Cheers! WOWWW! Sarika
Hi again Sleepy Girl! Sorry to hear that you are experiencing technical difficulties. Always a drag! Trust you are, otherwise, well as I heard on the news, an hour or so ago, that a someone at Broadway Pentecostal Lodge, on Lamey's Mill Road, just off Granville Island, where my mom lived for almost five years, was just diagnosed with the CORVID-19 virus. Yikes, pretty close to home as very good friends, Flamin' and Sarge, live but two buildings away, [Where we did before we moved to Penticton in 2015.], and another friend, Joanne, who lives there as well, is currently is self quarantine, having just returned from Mesa where she was visiting her brother.
[Frances Willard, co-founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union]
So far everyone here is well although Lady Dar was having difficulty breathing over last few days. Quite worrying of course. She had a FaceTime consultation with her family doctor, [Chloë's/Rowan's as well), yesterday and she prescribed a new ventilator for her asthma and this seem to have done the trick as she is much improved. [On her second Zoom conference call of the day as I scribe. First was with United Church, (300 participants), and now with her book club, (10 readers), here in town. I just signed up as I had read in Emeriti Newsletter that Don Fisher, President, had done so. [If you read the issue in question, I signed us up to help out, if needed, other alumni who live hereabouts and might require help with grocery shopping, picking up prescriptions and the like.] Am hoping he and Sue will visit this coming summer, [They have an outstanding house exchange here.], if the world is still around by then. Trump seems determined to see that it isn't.
Buona Fortuna with your garden. I have little doubt that it will be wonderful as you certainly possess the same fashion and design senses as does Lady Dar!!! Okay, she forced me to say that!
I'm gave my legs a rest today and "attacked" our bedroom window and the front picture window. Latter didn't seem too, too bad until the sun shines and then you realize how dirty it has become over winter! I used a "wonder" cleaner I first bought at The Farmers' Market a couple of years ago. [Liked it so much I bought a large, almost 4L, container this past July.] Before tackling these panes I split more firewood. With temperatures becoming warmer don't think we'll need to use all that much more although we do enjoy having it on of an evening, while sipping wine, [Lady Dar, with a glass of a 2013 Noble Ridge Meritage, 13.9%, (delish as I'm having some too!), as she book clubs. She's been rearranging our "wine cellar", of late, to make room for latest releases and so we are finding stuff we didn't even know we owned!], and malt, me! Sometimes, often, both!!!
Always something to keep one busy here at The Burns Street Bistro! Must away to mash the turnip I've had on the boil. Have really enjoyed this root vegetable over last few months. Was a staple on the Prairies, and elsewhere, of course, and I wish my version tasted quite as delicious as my grandmother's and mother's dishes. Still, seems to receive a passing grade from Lady Dar and even Rosie-the-Riveter so I must be doing something right! Once Zoom book club is over we'll watch more of Season 3 of Babylon Berlin. Do you know it? Highly recommend series. Fondestos from Her Imperiousness, in absentia, to you, Sarika and your lovely parents. Please pass along our best wishes. Stay well, all of you. Happy Dreams! Cheers, Patrizzio! Pic: With your recent CAUT jet-setting, if you have been in contact with either Boris or Donald the last snap will alert you to an incredible medical breakthrough! Alternate forms of greeting! Ultimate denial!
Do I Have the Covid Virus? [I loved the dog. Colin]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYk8dY2xrNo&feature=youtu.be
If Corona Virus Doesn't Kill You Distance Learning Will: An Israeli mother's rant about her kids home schooling during the COVID epidemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=8U6zU4MXmnA&feature=emb_logo
Patrizzio, I'm glad C is getting good treatment for her health. My mom has asthma too, so she is taking good care at home. Sounds as if you're spending your days well. Today I answered what seemed like 1000 questions from students, and worked with a committee I'm in to sort out one of our big exams. Couldn't get on to open some files I'm supposed to vet for tomorrow afternoon, and hoping the tech person will get back to me in time. I'm going to work on some lectures when I get off email.
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| Alexandrine, Tinné 1860 |
[Alexandrine Tinné was the richest woman in the Netherlands, who explored Africa in the mid-19th century. She was murdered by the Tuareg in Libya when she was betrayed by her guide in January 1869]
The day was so beautiful! We saw a lovely magnolia in the neighbourhood. I think I told you I'm building a laneway house, and it was great to see my bathtub was in. It was a lot of stress trying to choose one when they had none in stock, so I hope I made the right choice. I'm liking my siding, which is a pale green, but still unsure about my front door, which is more orange than the red I had in mind.
I miss my April CAUT Council meeting already - I love meeting up with people from all over Canada, especially at the end of day, when some of us serious oyster lovers go and grab tables for our buck-a-shuck hour. This is popular and the hotel usually has more than one group of conference attendees (we had a hockey group once, as well as the Conservative Party). So getting a table requires strategy. And the different provinces have dinners on different nights, but we always get together for the great seafood tower at the Shore Club. I know, every other province wonders why the B.C. folks get a seafood tower in Ottawa! But it's oh so delicious!
[He-Gassen (Japanese for “Fart fight”) Detail from a scroll (enlarged and revised edition of an original from 1680) Art: Fukuyama Soran, 1846]
I'm also going to miss our Council dinner, when we get amazing speakers - we had the director general of Amnesty International speak to us in November. And I always love my walks along Parliament Hill and in summer, by the river. I also usually get a membership at the National Gallery of Canada, which is such an awesome privilege. I really love going there every time I go to Ottawa, which is about 9 times a year.
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| Dunny Roll! |
I'm going to miss our Executive retreat, too, which was supposed to be in Montebello in June. It would have been my last retreat, as it's my last year on the Exec. Montebello is just so special. So these are some of the memories of fun stuff I do! Btw - I absolutely adore Don Fisher. Talk to you soon, Sarika Hi Laneway House Woman! We are ahead of you in terms of bathtub as one in Chloë's basement suite has been in for a few weeks now, although plenty of dry walling left to be done. You should count your lucky stars that travel is restricted otherwise Lady Dar would be knocking on your door, her head brimming with colour advice for your siding, doors, interior paint, to say nothing abou
how you should arrange furniture and decorate!
[Gathering crude turpentine -- North Carolina c 1903.]
With any luck your home
will be finished by the time we are able to visit and you'll only have
to endure, "Well, I would have done it this way!" Welcome to Patrizzio's World!!!
Just had a note from Don Fisher about the Emeriti program he hoped to start
to help those alumni who might need help, of one sort or another, and it
has been cancelled on the advice of health authorities given the fact
that the Emeriti are ones at high risk! Whew! Is this a run-on sentence, Professoressa? Fondestos from Lady Dar to you, Sarika. Stay well, Betty Boop. Trust our paths will cross in the not too, too distant future. Cheers, Patrizzio!
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