Loch Ness Monster

It's been rather fun getting this newsletter. I was amazed at how much of an economic benefit the monster has. 

From "Scotland Now Newsletter"

"The Loch Ness Monster has reportedly been spotted for a fifth time this year after a dark shape appeared on the surface of the water.

According to the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, the elusive creature was spotted when the shape moved across the famous loch for a few minutes before disappearing behind a tree."

The world-famous monster is estimated to bring in around £41 million to the Scottish economy through tourism."

We got vaccinated, Monday, March 29!

We were eligible to call Friday at noon. I got through on the fourth try at 12:30 and waited about 10 minutes on hold. I guess we were lucky they were opening up a clinic at UBC Monday so we were there on the first day. It's only about a 10 minute walk and we were early but they took us right way. It was nice to see people from Westjet helping out. I guess that's the closest we'll get to taking a plane anytime soon.

The clinic is in the UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at 2405 Wesbrook Mall. We can see the building from our apartment. We got the pfizer vaccine and the person who gave you the vaccine will be contacting you when you can return for the second dose according to the yellow sheet we received.

No suckers but they were giving out stickers if you wanted one:)

This is where we waited for 15 minutes after the vaccine.

Itty Bitty Book Review: "Transcendent Kingdom"

 "Transcendent Kingdom" by Yaa Gyasi

This is a novel my other bookclub is reading and I found it quite fascinating. I will look forward to discussing it. 

She's made a pretty impressive start as a novelist. From Wiki:

Yaa Gyasi (born 1989) is a Ghanaian-American novelist. Her debut novel, Homegoing, published in 2016, won her, at the age of 26, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction, the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" honors for 2016 and the American Book Award. She was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020.^[1]

Her debut novel Homegoing was inspired by a 2009 trip to Ghana, Gyasi's first since leaving the country as an infant. The novel was completed in 2015, and after initial readings from publishers, was met with numerous offers before she accepted a seven-figure (1 million)  advance from Knopf.

What we were doing on March 27 five years ago

 I always do my blog the day before so since we're not doing very much these days I thought I would look back five years ago.  Looks like it was Easter and I'm looking at the same colour of tulips beside my cat. 

From my blog:

Richard and Grace and John and Carol came for Easter Dinner last night.  It was great to have everyone together and I did a stress free holiday dinner....raclette.  I love dinners where you can do everything ahead of time then just relax with guests.  Carol brought over a wonderful chocolate cake and we all have lots of leftovers from it...thank you,  Carol!

Cherry blossom season is here again

 From "Vancouver is Awesome"

Ready or not...it's here: Cherry blossom season in Vancouver.

From the tree-lined streets you happen to stroll on your afternoon neighbourhood walk to painstakingly coordinated guerilla photoshoots, people are spotting the city's thousands of blossoming trees loaded with cheery pink and white blooms and capturing every breathtaking moment.

Cherry blossoms are one of the most highly-anticipated harbingers of springtime, and for a lot of Vancouverites they represent that energetic burst of vibrancy that comes from emerging from winter's slumber. Also: They are dang beautiful to look at. 

We've rounded up just a sampling of the many pics tagged with #vancouverisawesome (that's us!) on Instagram showing cherry blossoms (and a few pretty-in-pink magnolia blooms, no doubt) from all sorts of angles. And this is just the beginning!

At The Sylvia again today

 We had a great lunch as usual.

This came up as a FB memory 8 years ago.  We were quite fascinated by the "herons" and enjoyed watching them head out to fish.  Didn't like the cackling of the chicks quite so much. It was more obvious when we moved to the 6th floor. 

FB memory:

The herons are back…Jim took this photo on his phone.

The first piece of writing I did after arriving for Jim's first teaching stint in France in 2002

I probably have posted this before but coudn't think of anything to post so thought I would think of those wonderful days. Of course, we did recently have 9/11 so it wasn't quite all wonderful in the world.

 Carqueiranne, France Lettre de Provence #1 February/2002

Our first time arriving in Nice by airplane! It was a spectacular flight from Frankfurt after the usual mind numbing transatlantic ordeal. The sun was shining and the sky was clear as we flew over the various mountain ranges to finally sweep over the Alpes-Maritimes and make that breath taking descent over the azur blue of the Mediterranean.

It’s a wonderful way to enter the south of France...although nothing can quite beat stumbling bleary-eyed from your second class couchette compartment after tossing and turning all night on the overnight train from Paris to see the bluest of skies and the Mediterranean in all its glory and the familiar landscape of olives, palms and vines.

The flight from Vancouver was even more of an ordeal than usual since it was a matter of months after 9/ll and security was tight with a palpable tension everywhere. All this seemed to evaporate in the Frankfurt airport as we passed customs with narry a glance at our passports. We entered a different world as we boarded our plane for the south of France. The door to the pilot cabin was wide open throughout the flight and staff and passengers wandered freely in and out laughing and joking. .

The flight is just over an hour but drinks and a lunch were served. Flight attendants just barely got the third round of drinks offered before landing. We drank our pastis, that unique liqorice tasting aperitif that tastes absolutely right only in the south of France, while daydreaming of mussels and fries with Dijon mustard washed down with a rose wine of Provence in a “Restaurant Pieds dans l’Eau”. The French have this wonderful expression “Restaurants With Their Feet in the Water” to describe restaurants that really are located on the water...none of this sea glimpse sort of thing. They take their ocean and dining experiences seriously.

The plane landed with a thud and swayed in an inebriated manner along the runway. I guess the customs people in the Nice airport were still enjoying lunch as there was no one in the arrival area and we were delayed behind a metal barrier for a few minutes until the pilots arrived, broke through and let us all in.

Our luggage was ready in minutes and we got our car with relatively little trouble other than raised eyebrows that our rental period was for three months.

We couldn’t believe the weather on the 25th of January....sunny, blue blue skies and around 20 degrees. We sat on our hotel balcony overlooking the Promenade des Anglais and seriously thought of trying to find the shorts we had packed for April in Italy. Instead we cracked open a bottle of rosé of Provence from the mini-bar. We knew we could never last until the restaurants opened at 7pm so wandered the old town for a while and bought cheese, bread, and fruit for a picnic on our balcony before drifting off to sleep.

View from a balcony at the Hotel Suisse.

Old predictions for the future no pandemic in sight

Wonderful news for a wonderful art gallery!

 

Thanks in part to a hefty anonymous donation, the Paris museum will undergo an ambitious redesign that opens the entire building to the public, showcasing more of its vast art collection.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE 

Note: Though COVID-19 has stalled a lot of travel plans, we hope our stories can offer inspiration for your future adventures—and a bit of hope.

Each year, an estimated 3.6 million visitors head to the Musée d’Orsay to enjoy the vast collection of 19th- and 20th-century art, with works by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and other famed creators on display. But the hugely popular site in Paris hasn’t always been a museum—it was built as a train station on the Left Bank of the Seine River during the early 1900s. The barrel-vaulted hall of the historic Gare d’Orsay station has remained largely unchanged since it was repurposed as museum, which opened in 1986. However, after a recent $22.6 million donation from an anonymous philanthropist (made through the nonprofit American Friends of Musée d’Orsay), the layout of this internationally renowned museum will soon change.

In early March, Musée d’Orsay announced its plans for an ambitious redesign to transform the entire 19th-century building into public space, allowing the museum to show more of its vast selection of artworks, which includes the world’s largest impressionist collection. As part of the overhaul, former hotel rooms built within the original train station, which are currently used as the museum’s administration spaces, will be converted into a new wing of impressionist and post-impressionist galleries that span 13,000 square feet in total, while the offices in the museum’s south wing will be relocated to a nearby venue.

A few of the famous paintings:

"Dinner at the Ball"  Edgar Degas

"Self-Portrait" Vincent Van Gogh

"London, Houses of Parliament" Claude Monet

An old friend writes a mystery

 

Just bought the Kindle edition and really look forward to reading it. Geoff was a teacher and he was a good friend. He was always very interested in Spanish and married a Mexican woman he met and now lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

"Given a second chance to prove himself as an investigative agent, the new recruit, Mike Benhumea, is sent to San Miguel de Allende to report on a suspected major criminal. Things get dangerously out of hand, when he falls in love with the criminal’s beautiful, blind daughter.  

“A rare blend of humor and mystery.” Karen Temple.  

“An absorbing tale of intrigue, danger and, ultimately, love.” Sharon Steeber  

“A dexterous blend of Graham Greene and P. G. Wodehouse.” Eric Mankell Educated in UK and Canada, Geoff Hargreaves worked for the British Council in Spain. For the last thirty years he has had a home in Mexico, where he now lives permanently, translating Mexican novels, stories, and poems. Among them is the novel Seventy Times Seven by Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo, published by Floricanto Press."

Wouldn't we all give everything for the line-ups, the crowds, trying on shoes lots of other people had tried on.

I remember these so well and there were tremendous deals for those of us with very little money and even people who had money went to them. Something about getting a deal.

 An Army and Navy store in the late 1960s during the spring shoe sale.

Notre Dame Model Kit

 Colin Mcbrde posted this on FB.  I loved it and especially the colours. 

You can buy it here:

https://www.crazytoys.co.uk/product/piececool-notre-dame-cathedral-paris-3d-metal-model-kits-diy-assemble-puzzle-laser-cut-jigsaw-toys-p161-bs/?fbclid=IwAR0xmqUjl8Aeu0UnxKEJynShhup6STOKwDx8K6QICO6oHLWsvW_sdueAoJk

More on crowds

Spring Break crowds in Florida.

I can understand young people wanting to break loose from all the restrictions and keep up the crazy Spring Break traditions but seriously?  There are reports of lots of arrests but these places where students come to didn't really seem very prepared. And there seems to have been many incentives like cheap flights and deals to encourage travel at this time. I can also understand why businesses are wanting to get back a little business.  I think there will be very unfortunate consequences.

In terms of my own views on crowds I think I really will never be concerned about crowds again as I will be so happy to see that people will have the freedom to travel freely and enjoy all the wonderful places tourists can visit.

Itty Bitty Book Review: "A Bend in the River"

"A Bend in the River"  by V.S. Naipaul

Well, I read 156 of 278 pages. It's a Brock House Bookclub choice and perhaps in non-pandemic times I might have finished it. I kept putting it down then taking it up again. I don't usually read reviews before I finish a book and I have read Naipaul and feel he is a very good writer. I felt it was very "talky" and banging you over the head with ideas rather than showing you through characterization, setting, and plot. There are lots of ideas and you learn things about Africa...most of which is very depressing. It certainly isn't the Africa of Alexander McCall Smith.

 So, I decided to read a review. I agree completely and decided to move on to reading novels that work. 

From: Kirkus Reviews

Naipaul's gloomy vision of post-colonial Africa is sure to attract interest, especially since it creepily coincides with his brother Shiva's far less compassionate African journey, North of South (p. 371). But, though the Naipaul prose here is as gracefully moody as ever, the interplay between think-book and novel-of-character doesn't work at all: Salim remains an uninvolving personality throughout, and the cross-cultural themes are carved out much too thickly—often in long chunks of dialogue. This should have been an essay, perhaps, and one or two short stories; as a novel, it's listless—as a framework for ideas, it's never less than provocative.

At The Sylvia yesterday

 We had  a lovely lunch then walked along the seawall. We only saw two Canada Geese and they looked quite young. Usually there are lots. Jim said he saw a few more very much in the distance by the Cactus Club. I googled and brought up this CBC article that was posted Mar. 3, 2021.

'In Vancouver, it's geese who reign over the green space in town. 

Thousands of the birds — and counting — waddle as they please through the city's oceanfront parks, leaving an impressive trail of feathers and excrement in their wake. They foul public swimming pools, gobble young grass from freshly seeded fields, dig holes around water sprinklers and nip at passersby who get too close during mating season.

The Vancouver Park Board, by its own admission, cannot keep up.

"It is a constant challenge for the trades and operations staff," it said in a statement.

The board announced on Wednesday it is officially enlisting the public in its effort, asking for help to control the growing population of 3,500 geese. Staff are developing a Canada Geese Management Plan to find and remove nests, sterilize existing eggs and reinforce a ban on feeding geese."

I can't see the problem being solved this quickly. There must be something else going on.

I wonder how long this teddy bear will last. First time I've seen it.

The only two geese in front of The Sylvia  yesterday.

I think someone must have planted these crocuses.

Revisiting Provence and Spain....many memories!

 Brock House Monday Travel presentation was really fun since it was about walking through vineyards in France and Spain. Well, we generally don't do that kind of walking but we have been in many of the same areas wandering around the the same villages where they stayed and having wonderful lunches in restaurants.

I was interested in seeing Bilbao, Spain, again as we visited there on our first trip to Europe in 1972. We were mainly driving around France for July/Aug that year but since we were in Biarritz and Spain was so close we decided to enter Spain and we ended up driving across Spain all the way to Barcelona.

Bilbao was very much an industrial city then. We didn't speak Spanish at all and didn't even have a phrase book since we weren't planning on going to Spain. We needed to find a place to stay and Jim got the idea to ask a priest we saw walking by where we were. The idea was that a priest might likely speak French. He did and took us to a hotel and asked for a room for us.

 The hotel fellow actually asked the priest if he could verify that we were married. We had shown passports with our last names that were the same. We soon learned Spain was a very conservative country at that time...quite different from France. I had a colleague who travelled around Europe with his wife before they were married but they were Irish Catholics and had assured their parents they would  have separate rooms. This was a problem in France because the French couldn't understand why a young couple wanted  "deux chambers" (two rooms). They assumed there was a language problem and of course they wanted "une chambre pour deux" ( one room for two). Sometimes they gave up trying to explain it.

Now this architectural wonder is in Bilbao. I just love Frank Gehry.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, with an exhibition of 250 contemporary works of art. Built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Cantabrian Sea, it is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.

One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something", according to architectural critic Paul Goldberger.^[2] The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.^[2]

Some other projects by Gehry:

Art Gallery of Ontario (renovation), Toronto, Canada

Born in Toronto in 1929, Gehry celebrated his first Canadian project there, a renovation of the Art Gallery of Ontario, just a few months shy of turning 80. The 1918 museum had already undergone expansion three times prior to the Gehry commission. In response, the architect reorganized the jumbled plan and inserted a variety of energetic and subdued volumes for additional exhibition space.

Walt Disney Concert Hall, LA.

Olympic Fish Pavillion, Barcelona, Spain, 1992

Dancing House, Prague.

Branching out in my reading...

 For starters, I think I'm going to read some novels that have a humorous element. At the Zoom Jane Austen group meeting, someone mentioned she was reading "Molly of the Mall" by Heidi L M. Jacobs and said it was amusing. Someone else commented that they could use a good laugh. Well, couldn't we all. There was an ebook copy at the library so I now have it on my Kobo

"She is currently the English and History Librarian at the Ontario-based University of Windsor. Molly of the Mall won the 2020 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour."

Blurb on Amazon:

"Aspiring novelist Molly MacGregor’s life is strikingly different from a literary heroine's. Named for one of literature’s least romantic protagonists, Moll Flanders, Molly lives in Edmonton, a city she finds irredeemably unromantic, where she writes university term papers instead of novels, and sells shoes in the Largest Mall on Earth. There she seeks the other half of her young life's own matched pair. Delightfully whimsical, Heidi L.M. Jacobs’s Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear explores its namesake's love for the written word, love for the wrong men (and the right one), and her complicated love for her city."

I may give some of these a try. "Yiddish for Pirates" came up on some other list recently and I think I will certainly have to give the Will Ferguson "Beyond Belfast" a try. I"ve read "The Sisters Brothers" but don't remember it being particularly comic.

Past Leacock Medal Winners

Year	Winner	Book	Publisher
2019	Cathal Kelly	Boy Wonders	Doubleday Canada
2018	Jennifer Craig	Gone to Pot	Second Story Press
2017	Gary Barwin	Yiddish for Pirates	Vintage Canada
2016	Susan Juby	Republic of Dirt	Harper Collins
2015	Terry Fallis	No Relation	McClelland & Stewart
2014	Bill Conall	The Promised Land: A Novel of Cape Breton	Boularderie Island Press
2013	Cassie Stocks	Dance, Gladys, Dance	NeWest Press
2012	Patrick deWitt	The Sisters Brothers	Ecco Press
2011	Trevor Cole	Practical Jean	McClelland & Stewart Canada
2010	Will Ferguson	Beyond Belfast	Penguin Books

Books and Paris

This came up on a FB thing about "Books about Paris". I did get the "Paris for One" at the library. Well, a "romance" I guess. Not exactly my style but somewhat interesting.  Jojo Moyes seems to be quite a popular writer but there seems to be quite a controversy about her novel about the "packhorse librarians". I guess I was attracted to it because of these people bringing books to the backwoods. I have it on hold so I guess that's why I was open to this novel.

 So, I've done two new things recently. Listened to an interview by Oprah (guess I don't have to say what that was) and read most of a "romance" novel. I may not finish it...seems pretty predictable.  Amazing what being in "lock down" can lead one to do. 

But then again I might get into romance novels...one has to find comfort where one can these days. I can't say I'm particularly enjoying my rather serious bookclub novels at the moment.

'"But in the middle of the novel’s release, fellow author Richardson has claimed Moyes’ story features “alarming similarities” to her own novel, which was published months earlier in May.Speaking to Buzzfeed News, Richardson initially said she “could only hope there was more than enough room for more than one” novel on the subject, but revealed it wasn’t long before a blogger allegedly told her there were “specific similarities” between the two books.

“History is not proprietorial,” Richardson said. “[But] the disturbing similarities found in Moyes' book are too many and too specific and quite puzzling.

“None of the similarities found in Moyes' novel can be chalked up to the realities of history, nor can be found in any historical records, archives or photographs of the packhorse librarian project initiative that I meticulously studied. These fictional devices/ plot points were ones I invented.”

“The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes is a wholly original work,” a spokesperson for Penguin Random House offshoot Pamela Dorman later told the publication. “It is a deeply researched piece of historical fiction based on the true story of the Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky.

The Vancouver Special

 It was an architecture we loved to hate and now renovations are giving it almost a mid-Century vibe. I find it fascinating that just a bit of angle and colour variation makes a difference.

From the Vancouver Heritage Foundation for more info on the originals::

https://www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org/house-styles/vancouver-special/

Crowds

Hong Kong...just ordinary crowds not related to the protests.

Something Rick Hulbert focused on was how crowds of tourists ruined places and photo opportunities.  It got me thinking about "good" and "bad" crowds. 

As much as I loved the city of Hong Kong it was pretty crazy for crowds. One day Sylvia and I got up about an hour before full sunrise just to experience the city without the crowds. There were people in the park doing Tai Chi and walking their birds in cages. It was so peaceful and then the sun came up and the whole city was packed with people in what seemed like just minutes. Bangkok is even crazier with contant honking of vehicle horns. In fact, when we came back to Hong Kong it seemed like a quiet village after Bangkok.

 But at least most of these people were locals going about their business so it was not so bad for me. The crowds I find really distressing are the hordes of tourists in the wonderful cities like Venice, Florence, and Paris.  At least we saw Paris in the days before the hordes. I do feel sorry for the residents of these cities. We often avoided downtown Victoria in the summer because of the tourists and it was nothing like what these very popular tourist places experience.

The weekly market in Carqueiranne was pretty crowded but that's ok somehow. Again...mainly locals. And the French at their markets are such a delight to watch. They get such pleasure from chatting with the sellers they've known for years and such a pleasure tn buying wonderful food. I was about the only one who asked the price of things that weren't priced. It seems money is no object when buying at the market.

The crowds are ok at the cafés of Paris and the pubs in the UK and the incredibly crowded pubs in Amsterdam where the locals seek out the most crowded pubs where you barely have standing room. I guess that isn't happening at the moment. And there's nothing like a full house for concerts and sports events.  

I wonder how I'll feel about crowds after the pandemic is over. Perhaps I will love all crowds...who knows?

Dialects of the Scots language

 I found this to be a really interesting article and there is an interactive map where you can click on the 13 regions and hear that dialect spoken by a local. You can also read what they are saying about their dialect.

Thinking of our wonderful house/car exchange we did in Edinburg for three weeks one year. We saw a lot of Scotland including the Isle of Skye.

And remembering meeting Jim's maternal grandparents for the first time before we got married. They had been given strict instructions by Jim's mom "not to be talking any old Scots to Janice". 

With voices changing every 20 miles, it’s difficult to quantify exactly how many dialects come under the Scots language umbrella.

But a rough count suggests lucky number 13, divided up as Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Black Isle, Moray, Aberdeenshire, South Northern (South Kincardineshire and Northern Angus), North-East Central, East Central, West Central, South Central, Boarders and Ulster (yep, Scots made it over the water to Ireland too with Irish Gaelic).

Inverness and the Outer Hebrides may seem curiously absent from this list. But as these regions were predominantly Gaelic speaking areas, the Scots language didn’t take hold with the same intensity, meaning there’s no specific Scots dialect recorded for these regions – though we have included them on the map here for comparison.

The wildly diverse Scots language

Among the likes of Doric, the north-east regions of Scotland, Southern Scots, Scottish Borders, or Dundonian, the East Central North, all the dialects have similarities, but it’s their differences which make the Scots language so richly varied.

The information for the map comes from the Scots Language Centre, Professor Robert McColl Millar at Aberdeen University and a collection of local people from each location, who share their unique knowledge of the wildly diverse Scottish language.

Rest of the article and interactive map here:

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/specials/2654848/spikkin-scots-doric/?utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Z3zXLh5Blo4aKNK52gslHOJKesx83tlebwYbEPov7LpYqLF-C15z3AvU