and even more children's art!

Jesusland

This map is circulating the Internet these days along with a lot of talk of the "blue states" and "succession". So much for the myth of everyone pulling together regardless of who wins US elections. It really is two countries...but then, a lot of countries are like that. This rift might help the US to understand diversity a little more. About time to give up on the melting pot idea.

Luciano's Restaurant

I haven't tried this yet but it is getting rave reviews and Don and Elaine say it's great. It's at the bottom of Yates Street and I took a look at their menu. What attracted my eye was "Meatball Monday" which is a three course dinner for $25 a couple. Sounds like a pretty good deal...a brushetta with gorganzola, salad with salami, then spag and meatballs.

Lac d'Annecy

When I was looking for a photo of Lac d'Annecy for a previous post I came upon the website for Annecy and I really loved the photo of the lake, mountains, and sailboats that was on the introductory page so did a couple of paintings with that theme. I think I was especially attracted to this photo because while it is Lac d'Annecy it could also be the view of our own Pacific Ocean with the Olympics in the background.



"Lac d'Annecy" 11" x 14" acrylic on paper
Gift for Jacqueline and Roger




"Lac d'Annecy" 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas
Gift for Monique

a sandwich, a fishstick...an ice-bucket!

News items:

An online casino company forked over $28,000 US Wednesday on eBay to the owner of a 10-year-old, partially eaten cheese sandwich thought to be embedded with the image of the Virgin Mary.

Ontario man sees profit in Jesus-like fish stick. Unlike the decade-old grilled cheese which has a bite taken out of it, the fish stick is intact, without a smidgen eaten.

And now the ICE BUCKET WITH A JOAN OF ARC IMAGE!!!

We bought this ice-bucket in France at a flea market a couple of years ago and have been fascinated ever since by the image of Joan of Arc! Please compare the smudge mark on the white waiter image and the Joan of Arc drawing and you will see the resemblance immediately!

Faithful readers of this blog can bid before it is auctioned off on eBay! Make your bids now!!!


Drawing of Joan of Arc


Joan of Arc image on ice-bucket

Masks in close up 2

These always brighten my day!

Campaniles

A few more of these wonderful bell towers

more children's art

Seems like a good day to post some of this colourful art to counter the miserable rain.

For all you dog lovers

I found this display in Market Square.

Local Hero

The new owner of Grafton Books on Oak Bay Avenue was one of the founders of Abebooks (Advanced Book Exchange Inc.) I believe ABE now has over 10,000 booksellers online with over 50 million books available. A big major success story for a company that was founded in little old Victoria. When we were in Galveston earlier this year there was a great bookstore and when the owner heard we were from Victoria she mentioned how super Abebooks was.

On Friday I had just wandered into Grafton Books and overheard the new owner telling someone about Abebooks as a way of getting a title she was looking for. The customer was very impressed and commented that "Wow, that must be some big American corporation did that!" The owner made some comment like, "Well, not really." Then I piped up saying that she was talking to one of the founders of Abebooks and it was a local Victoria company. The customer was floored!

I love Abebooks! The little library in our small village of Carquieranne had a wonderful book called "Provence Des Campaniles" which has great photos, poetry, prose, etc on the wrought iron bell towers that are very prevalent in southern France. We tried to buy this book in France but it is out of print and never seemed to be in used bookstores even in Paris. We returned home and went on Abebooks and found a copy, no problem!

Why we don't have pets

Looks like France is a go...Feb - May this time. If anyone knows someone who needs to rent a house short term send me an email.

Other books I've been reading...

"The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" by M.G. Vassangi

Although I enjoyed his "The Book of Secrets" very much I found this one rather flat and too much a polemic rather than a story that came alive. A great first page but slowly went downhill after that. People in my Bookclub who had lived in Africa had a different idea and felt it captured the people, setting, times etc. very well. Rather hard to argue with that when you haven't lived in Africa! I always remember being amused by a friend who was doing a doctorate at Cambridge on Robert Graves and who also happened to be a friend of Graves. He felt he had a real ace in the hole because he could always counter his examining committe with "Gee, Robert didn't see it that way". Didn't get his doctorate in the end.

"The Game" by Laurie R. King

This is another of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. I do enjoy these mysteries very much even if many things are somewhat over the top. That's part of the fun but like many mystery series, you have to be a fan otherwise you probably can't get beyond it. Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim' is a character in this one and it takes place in India, of course. King loves the novel Kim and encourages the reader to read it. I've dug out a copy and have dipped into it...quite neat so far.

""The Finishing School" by Muriel Spark

Couldn't take more than about 10 pages of this latest claptrap. Spark has been in her dotage for a while now. I notice that BBC Radio 4 actually read this on air as "Book of the Week"...well, it is short (like most of the others).

"Wild Dogs" by Helen Humphreys

Her previous two novels, "Afterimage" and "The Lost Garden" were stunning in their beauty and poetic language. This seems like a particularly dismal tale so far (read to page 32) about six people who have lost their dogs in various ways. The dogs have joined a wild pack and this group comes together to call for them each evening. On page 32 we are treated to an especially ugly image of a laundromat that is used uniquely for drying pigs' ears into dog chews. Not sure what the point of this is other than it relates to dogs. Seems like a good place to end my reading.

Masks in close up

I really do love these masks!

Geeks and Haiku

From the Globe and Mail:

Even as its payroll balloons, Google Inc. remains picky about whom it hires, reports The Associated Press. Here are some of the 21 questions on its aptitude test for prospective programmers:

* How many differrent ways can you colour an icosahedron with one of three colours on each face?

* On an infinite, two-dimentional rectangular lattice of one-ohm resistors, what is the resistance between two nodes that are a knight's move away?

* Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality.

I think the job could only be a piece of cake after going through this!. Maybe there's a market for an "Aptitude Tests for Dummies" book...

Chinatown

I began reading Wayson Choy's new book "All That Matters" and it seems like it's going to be a real treat. Inspired me to drop by Chinatown and take some pictures and to buy some bar-b-q duck for dinner. There certainly are great values in Chinatown for just about everything, but I am always taken somewhat aback by the brusque manner of serving the public of some merchants.

Very much a cultural difference from France. There, even if you're buying one small petit four you will greeted with "Bonjour, madam", "Vous desirez, madam?", "Merci, madame", "Au revoir, madame" etc. And this small pastry will be carefully put into a pretty box and tied with a ribbon and a bow. You'd think you were purchasing the crown jewels!

Some photos of Chinatown

More places Richard is travelling

This last week it's been Vernon with a pop of 58,000



and Chase with a pop of 2500. They are staying at this First Nation's run lodge. About 10 years ago we all stayed there as a family. As I recall it was that summer that rained continually.

A bouquet for Brasserie l'Ecole Restaurant

Tim and Bronwen treated us to dinner at Brasserie l"Ecole last night to celebrate Bronwen's research grants and to thank Jim for his help. Thanks very much!

We waited about an hour for our steaks to arrive and were having a good time chatting but then did begin to wonder if they had forgotten us. Just as we mentioned something our meals arrived. We hadn't really made a complaint but one of staff came to the table and apologized for the wait and handed each couple a $50 gift certificate for the restaurant. Wow...we were impressed! Certainly way beyond expectations and I think businesses never lose when they do that because of all the positive word of mouth they receive.

Great to get a free dinner when you're getting a free dinner! We got a free flight once when we were already on a free flight...you gotta love that.

So, give Brasserie l'Ecole a try.

more children's art

NYC Vancouver style

When we were in Vancouver recently they were filming scenes for a movie taking place in NYC. I was fooled at first by this sign and thought, wow...the Marine Building is becoming apartments...not to be...




The street sign below does give away the real location somewhat...

Alice Munro wins the Giller

Finally I agree with the Giller jury...good on Alice Munro! I've been saving this book for France but I know it probably is the best of the nominations. And she was so gracious in her speech, not like Austin Clarke (won it in 2002 for The Polished Hoe) and was such a pompous windbag. Wayne Johnstone should have won it that year for "The Navigator of New York". And in 2003, Ann-Marie Macdonald should have won it for "The Way the Crow Flies" NOT Vassanji for "The In-between World of Vikram Lall". A great first page but in the end rather flat - too much of a polemic.

The Giller awards ceremony seems to have it right...a great party for the invitees and Mary Walsh there to make sure it doesn't get too stuffy. I liked her crack at Sheila Copps..."yes, well, you're still on about the problem women have in politics..oh yes...all the problems... putting make up on both political faces...no, dear, don't answer my questions..." And of course it wouldn't be a Can Lit event without Margaret Atwood laughing at her own jokes because no one else is. She's no comedian but I still think she should win the Nobel prize.

In honour of our war veterans

This statue to war veterans in Vancouver always comes to my mind on Remembrance Day.

Masks

We saw some fabulous masks in my Northwest Coast Art yesterday but aren't these the most amazing masks as well? They are all made by art education students at Uvic and currently displayed in the Art Education area of MacLaurin. I was absolutely wowed by them...so imaginative and just made out of paper.

More page 23

Fern sent me this for the page 23 game...thanks, Fern!

...and I knew then that I wanted to be his girlfriend so I stopped talking
for a while and tried to act demure by keeping my lips a certain way.

Be mysterious I told myself. I'd been going after that
laughing-on-the-outside, cyrying-on-the-inside look for a while. It all had
to do with the eyes and the mouth and certain pauses in your speech. It's
kind of tragic and romantic. I wasn't very good at it but I liked the
bullshit bravado of it, you know, the "effort" of trying to cover something
up and show it at the same time.

from a complicated kindness by Miriam Toews

Where Richard's been travelling with his job

Interesting that the place Richard has liked the best is Smithers and with a population of 5,414
it has a very cool website at least to my mind.
Of course it could help that in the morning they had this magical snowfall that disappeared with
the sun before it became a problem. Looks like a very neat ski area.





Prince George with a population of 72,000 had the dullest website of all in my opinion.
Although they brag about some digital photo gallery for the film industry I couldn't
get one picture from their city website. Had to google and only got a rather dull pix
of University of Northern B.C.




Fort St. John with a pop of 17,000 had quite a neat website too and even had some
video footage

The Jane Austen Book Club

This novel tickled my fancy for the most part...a bit overly contrived in places but worth a read. I did like it when Bernadette livened up the fundraiser dinner by creating a colourful life for herself to entertain the table.

I recently received an email from a friend who sat next to an extraordinary woman on a trans Atlantic flight, a  Canadian, but Irish-born - who regaled her with stories of her colourful life for most of the trip.  She looked about sixty but told her she was 81 and that she was on her way to Mauritius to join an adventure-type holiday despite having a metal plate in her leg (the result of an old skiing accident) plus a recent knee replacement and a black eye (a domestic accident).  She had a pilot's licence, four children, eleven grand-children and she spoke Arabic and German.  When my friend left her at Heathrow, she was only half-way through her journey.

Hmm...if I get bored in my sixties perhaps I'll go round telling people I'm in my eighties and make up imaginative stories about my life!

I also did enjoy this quote from the book:

"Sylvia thought how all parents wanted an impossible life for their children - happy beginning, happy middle, happy ending. No plot of any kind. What uninteresting people would result if parents got their way?"

All very true but as a friend remarked, we could do with less plot sometimes.

And the final words of the novel were left to Austen:

"The mere habit of learning to love is the thiing."



I thought this "contemporary photo" of Jane Austen captured her essence much more than that rather dreary and unflattering drawing by her sister.

Northwest Coast Art

I'm loving this course with Kerry Mason at UVic. During our first session we saw so many amazing examples of all sorts of things. I really know so little about this topic and it's exciting to have a whole new thing ahead of me. It was interesting to learn that the Potlatch ban in B.C. was really the Federal Government's action mainly because of pressure from missionaries and also the fish canning companies since Potlatch time was in October and they lost large numbers of their workforce during the prime canning season. It seems and is apparently backed up by Hansard reports of the time that the provincial government did understand and support the Potlatch system.

Isn't it great that the new twenty dollar bill has Bill Reid's work on it!

Page 23 game...especially for Monique!

The idea is to post something from page 23 of what you're currently reading. Thanks, Josh, for this neat idea.

From page 23 of "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why we love France but not the French" by Nadeau and Barlow.

"We started to understand what 'terroir' (soil, tradition, agriculture) means to the French at the Salon de l'Agriculture held every March in Paris. We arrived at the Salon expecting to visit a traditional American farm fair, indoors. We thought there would be cows, pigs, and maybe horses in one section, and tractors and machinery in another, with hotdog stands somewhere in the middle. To our great surprise, there was no machinery. There were no hotdogs either.

The Paris show was about animals and cuisine--and the French were not shy about mixing these themes. Cattle pens were decorated with huge posters of raw steaks and sausages. There was a stand with live ducks right beside another one selling their livers in jars. The tight juxtaposition of live animals and meat ruined our appetite at first, but once we got used to it, we nearly made ourselves sick tasting cider, wine, cheese, saucisson, tartiflette (a savory Savoy potato stew boiled in cream and gratineed with Reblochon cheese)...."

The tartiflette description is especially for Monique who is a "Savoyarde" (from the Alpes region in France)...actually an "Haute (high) Savoyarde" since she is from Annecy. And speaking of Reblochon cheese we shared an apartment for a month with Monique in a wonderful place right on the shores of Lac d'Annecy in 1976. Monique chose a very special Reblochon cheese that still needed to "ripen" and this ripening process needed to take place outside the fridge. The cheese seemed quite ripe to my nose already and for several days we played a little game of me putting the cheese in the fridge and Monique taking it out until it almost walked away itself! I must admit it was superb when we finally were allowed to eat it...


Very similar to the view from our apartment.



Old Annecy
C'est la plus belle ville de la France, n'est-ce pas?

Getting eyeballed

I loved this Halloween costume perhaps because it sort of reminded me of Mr. Peanut who was always on the Planter's Peanut tins when I was a kid.


Salesperson at Virgin


Mr. Peanut

I coulda ben a journalist...

Carol, who is a "desker" (newspaper lingo for editor...) at the Vancouver Sun gave us a tour of the newsroom...very cool! My plan to go to journalism school in Kingston changed when I met Jim so I've always been very interested in this world. Carol showed me her mailbox where the dreaded news assignments appeared when she was a reporter. The assignment that made her heart sink the most was covering the CRTC with all the legal jargon. Perhaps it's just as well I didn't become a journalist...

Although the new Van Sun building can't compare with the old Sun Tower which is one of my favourite old Vancouver buildings, the views are great and were pretty much the same views from our hotel room.

And speaking of newspapers the Waterfront Centre spoiled us rotten with loads of complimentary copies of just about anything our little hearts desired. A real treat was getting the current copy of the London Times for Sunday and Monday though this NewspaperDirect service they have. A great idea as you can get newspapers from all over the world. The copy is sent digitally and I guess the hotel prints it up. It's on 11 x 17 paper and nicely formatted so it's almost like leafing through a broadsheet.


The Suntower building


Room with a view:

Crab boats and feasts

John gave me this fabulous photograph that I love! Guess people can guess why... those primary colours just do it to me. It inspired us to go to the Boathouse restaurant in English Bay and I had the Crab Feast...very yummy and lots of fireworks going off over since it was Halloween.

We also had a great lunch with John and Carol at Scoozi's Restaurant/Deli at 508 Howe St ( John's suggestion). Super Italian and Greek food in a casual, funky atmosphere...we felt like we were in NYC.

Thanks, John!

* Tomorrow's blog will take you into the secret world of the Vancouver Sun...



Photograph by John Denniston © 2004 Crab Boat, Vesuvius Bay on Saltspring Island

Rain, rain, go away...

Just back from a very rainy day in Vancouver although Sat and Sun were superb...something to brighten up this dreary November day.