Warning: Nudists on Wreck Beach

I'm pretty sure these nudists were stoned....

Note: Wreck Beach is a nudist beach in Vancouver.

A rather coolish beginning to summer.  Perhaps we'll get swimming at Spanish Banks fairly soon.

From Benjamin's post in Palm Springs...

As he says, "It can't get any prettier than this."

Update: Perhaps not quite so much a paradise for some people at the moment. Palm Springs broke records with 121 F and Palm Desert has a continuing power outage. I really feel for people without AC.

The Munich Beer Festival, Octoberfest, is cancelled.

“The risks are simply too high“: Oktoberfest 2020 had to be cancelled

"It hurts, it's such a pity," said Minister President Söder in the Bavarian State Chancellery – together with Munich's Lord Mayor Reiter. However: "We have agreed that the risk is simply too high."

The Oktoberfest 2020 should actually take place from September 19 to October 4. About six million visitors from all over the world were expected. In times of Covid-19, however, the danger of infection in the mostly crowded beer tents and the many people in the streets and alleys on the Theresienwiese would be too high.

"We have experienced that the après-ski in Ischgl, various beer festivals for example, or even carnival events were unfortunately virus hubs," said Söder. This is why the greatest sensitivity applies to public festivals. "As long as there is no vaccine, as long as there is no medicine, special care must be taken."

I knew this was a big event but 6 million people...wow. Another large bad economic impact. I contacted Octoberfest with a link to the Georgia Strait article about the At-Home Beer Festival Kit and suggesting they might think of doing something similar. It will be interesting if I get a response.

Itty Bitty Book Review: "O' Artful Death"

"O' Artful Death" by Sarah Stewart Taylor

This is the first in her Sweeny McGeorge series...her first series of mysteries. I really enjoyed the first one in her new series that Lousie Penny highlighted..."The Mountains Wild".

She's a pretty accomplished writer right off the bat given this was her first foray into writing a murder msytery. They certainly aren't exactly typical "who dun its" and I guess that's why I like her style. She does write in a very lyrical manner.

Beer festivals

We're not really beer festival types but it is one of those events that bring large groups of people together having fun and that's a good thing and unfortunately one of the many things cancelled this year but our local craft breweries have created a "At-Home Beer Festival Kit".

We became fans of beer after our first trip to England in 1972 where we got introduced to tasty beer in wonderful pubs where you could also get pretty decent food.  A whole different experience from our "beer parlours" with lousy beer, lousy atmosphere, and  food was potato chips and maybe a pickled egg. Drinking beer was made as unpleasant an experience as possible.

I feel pretty proud of our craft beer scene. I even came back from a trip to England thinking our beer was better here now. This was also the time when all the young people were drinking American lager in the British pubs. I guess that's more about pints of bitter being their parents' drink.

From the Georgia Strait:

"The  spirit of community is strong in what’s being dubbed the At-Home Beer Festival Kit. Spearheaded by Stanley Park, and arriving just in time for Canada Day, the package spotlights nine beer offerings from four different Vancouver breweries: Russell, East Van, Red Truck and, of course, Stanley Park.

Intended to replicate celebrations that would normally take place in the summer (including the wildly popular Craft Beer Week Festival), the kit includes, in no particular order: 4 oz tasting cups, tent cards to mark your DIY tasting stations, beer passports, beer-tasting table mats, and coasters.

Should all of that lead you scratching your head, that’s a red flag you’ve never been to a beer festival. If that’s the case, the At-Home Beer Festival Kit serves as a primer for when the world returns to a sense of normality. Newbies can start with the included At-Home Beer Festival how-to guide.

In a press release, Stanley Park Brewmaster Thom Riley said, “We figured that since the beer festival season is cancelled, why not bring the fun home? Beer festivals are a great way to discover beers you may not have tried before, we’ve created an experience where you can not only explore brands and styles, but also support and celebrate local breweries."

Rest of the story here:
https://www.straight.com/food/just-in-time-for-canada-day-at-home-beer-festival-kit-give-you-chance-to-prepare-for-a-return

Good on UBC for creating this course.: The Pandemic's Impact on Society

This is certainly a timely topic and not surprised the course was full very quickly and has a long waiting list.

According to UBC, it's the first course of its kind in Canada that focuses solely on the sociological aspects of the pandemic. It has been put together by UBC's department of sociology and has been popular with students across various faculties and year levels as it doesn't require students to have any prerequisites.

UBC says it's unique because it acknowledges that all students are affected by COVID differently and therefore, it doesn't require students to attend the class at a specific time. Instead, the course content takes place within 48-hour windows, to allow for more flexible learning.

Students will have to complete a final project where they work with community partners to develop a strategy to inform the public about COVID-19. 

"What makes this course so special is the student projects at the end of the course where they will partner with a regional or international organization to develop materials intended to be useful in supporting the organization's mandate," said Wan Yee Lok, media relations specialist at UBC. 

"For example, students could create an infographic for employers with research about how to support employees working from home under lockdown."

Rest of the article here:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/new-covid-19-course-at-ubc-to-cover-pandemic-s-impact-on-society-1.5004645

Yep....no problem

Yaletown staircase murals...love these!

Over the course of the summer, Yaletown will transform its many staircases into vibrant, eye-catching murals, the first few having already seen completion.

The staircase murals are part of a large-scale art project launched by the Yaletown Business Improvement Association (YBIA), with intentions of brightening up the community and supporting local artists.

The first completed piece is a giant dog mural painted by Lukas Lundberg. In addition to this recent Yaletown creation, Lundberg took part in the Vancouver Mural Festival’s #MakeArtWhileApart initiative. He also has an indoor mural at Tequila Cocina, a recently-opened Mexican restaurant in North Vancouver.

There are 20 staircases in Yaletown which used to be part of railway loading docks.

“The brick patios were actually the backs of warehouses,” she says. “Trains went down Hamilton and Mainland Street and offloaded onto the raised loading docks.”

And while there are plenty of staircases to be transformed, each poses a challenge for artists in terms of creating mural art.

“We have little staircases which are super challenging for mural art,” says O’Shea. “They’re 3D and not on a single surface. But you can play with them and because they’re short, they’re a little secret.”

The weekend...

What was going on in Soho Saturday night....crazy. I don't think the pubs re-opening is a very good idea.

We went down to Spanish Banks Sunday. There were quite a few people enjoying the sunshine but we didn't have a problem getting a parking place.

All good things come to an end...

We tried to order our lamb dinner from Stepho's on Doordash the other day. We got a message..."too far away".  We were amazed they delivered here at all. It was certainly one of our cheapest meals at $17.95 and enough for two big dinners and a bit left over for lunch.

Happy 4th of July

On Canada Day, Linda posted this bingo card and I thought it was quite fun to see how many things I had done in Canada so we made up the next one togeether for July 4.

Humour

Itty Bitty Book Review: "The Mountains Wild"

 "The Mountains Wild" by Sarah Stewart Taylor

This is a new release featured by Louise Penny. She's  trying to help authors with new releases. It really appealed to me since it was a mystery and set in Ireland for the most part. I enjoyed reading it and especially the Irish atmosphere.  I'm going to try her first series.

Happy Canada Day!

The Literature-Map The Tourist Map of Literature

Well, we can't really be tourists these days but readers will love playing around with this site:

https://www.literature-map.com

You put in an author you like to read and then it brings up all sorts of authors you may like. It's great fun...give it a try!

It was mentioned on the FB group called  "Silent Book Club". People post a lot of interesting suggestions for reading and good reminders about authors you haven't read for a while.

Some info about it:

The Literature-Map is part of Gnod, the Global Network of Discovery.

It is based on Gnooks, Gnod's literature recommendation system. The more people like an author and another author, the closer together these two authors will move on the Literature-Map.

The French one was especially interesting to me...never heard of that!

Good on Louise Penny and what a good idea

From her FB page:

Because of the pandemic, many authors whose books are coming out now are not able to go on tour, and not getting the exposure they, or their books, deserve. For a while my publisher wisely decided to halt new publications, but now books are being launched. And so I want to tell you about THE MOUNTAINS WILD, by

Sarah Stewart Taylor Books

. It’s the start of a new series for her, and is set in New York and Dublin. THE MOUNTAINS WILD introduces cop Maggie D’arcy and has been called ‘lyrical’ and ‘a must-read’. Below is a link to more information. It is always a pleasure to support writers, and bookshops, and libraries. As I’ve been supported.

I bought a Kindle edition and am really enjoying reading it. It brings back quite wonderful memories of Ireland and is a good story to boot. I'll have to take a look at her previous series.

Laneway house inspired by Mondrian

Patty sent me this...just love it!

Itty Bitty Book Review: "Unto us a Son is Given"

"Unto us a Son is Given" by Donna Leon



Leon always writes a rather intriguing mystery and I do love the setting of Venice. Quite a twist in this one.

Sunset last night...

My letter to the editor...

I don't actually write a lot of letters to the editor ( five maybe over a lifetime?) but every one of them has been published. When I was teaching in Victoria I saw what a great difference our alternative school could make for some students who just couldn't be successful in a traditional school setting. 

Re: ‘One for the history books’: A small group of Grade 12s and their COVID-friendly graduation

I would like to express my congratulations to the graduates of the Maplewood Alternative High School. It was an inspiring and joyful story that lifted my spirits in these dismal times. The determination and exuberance these students expressed will serve them very well in the challenges to come.

I wish them all the very best.

Janice Sexton, Vancouver

Migrant workers hit hard everywhere

Thousands of dads in British Columbia will spend Father’s Day far away from their children as they tend and harvest local food crops, typically for minimum wage.

To mark the day, migrant workers and their families have posted photos of themselves on social media platforms holding signs asking Canadians to support their fight for more rights.

“My name is Esmeralda and my dad is named Benigno Orozco Rojas. He has to abandon his home in search of a better life. He is a migrant farm worker in Canada for the last six seasons.”

“Hi! I’m Nahomi, daughter of Mario Peralta Barrera. My dad had to leave to give us a better life. My mom and I miss him a lot but we have to get through it because he is the only breadwinner in our house. We ask that you help all the migrant workers like my dad defend their rights!” 

Rest of the article here:

https://vancouversun.com/news/fathers-day-campaign-tugs-on-heartstrings-asks-to-fight-for-migrant-workers-rights

It some good comes out of all of this current pandemic mess, perhaps these workers all over the world will get a better deal. 

From The Desert Sun:

Enrique Rangel sleeps with a bandana over his nose and mouth, his work boots next to the bed. The Salton City farmworker wakes up at 4 a.m., well before the sun rises, grabs a rag from a bucket filled with water and bleach, and wipes down his plastic mattress and pillow.

Then he joins other workers outside the Galilee Center’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Shelter in Mecca. Each sits at their own table with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in their hands, and a face covering hugging their chin. 

The shelter has provided beds, as well as hot meals and laundry services, for up to 65 farmworkers each night since it opened in 2017. The facility was a vast improvement for migrant workers in the region, who had long slept in fields or parking lots during the region's grape harvest, which typically runs between May and July.

After the coronavirus pandemic hit, however, the nonprofit reduced the facility’s capacity to 30 to allow for social distancing between beds and at meals. To prevent the spread of the virus inside the shelter, founder and president Gloria Gomez said staff disinfect surfaces “as much as we can.” Staff also take workers’ temperatures multiple times a day — before they go to work, when they return from the fields and before they go to bed.

Rest of the article here:
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2020/06/20/california-farmworkers-weigh-new-protocols-health-grape-harvest-peaks/3198450001/?utm_source=desertsun-Daily%20Briefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_briefing&utm_term=hero

Father's Day in the pandemic

Richard and Grace came over for Father's Day and we had a social distancing event. They really wanted to be outside to keep us healthy so they were on the balcony and we were inside. It worked out well and they brought lots of wonderful goodies. So great to see them and shared lots of old time stories...lots of which Grace hadn't heard:)

Thanks so much, Richard and Grace for making it a wonderful evening.

Lots of hot sauces...

Grace's wonderful sourdough bread...

More yummy presents...

Jim with his new apron...guess that's a hint to  start cooking more.

This looks really great too especially for me, the seafood lover. I won't be having too much of the hot stuff

And the perfect card...

Richard and Grace out on the balcony looking at the view. I'm glad they felt they could take their masks off when they sat down at the table outside. We do appreciate them being so careful with us.

Madrid

The Ephemeral Rainbows in Crystal Palace in Madrid, Spain 

Linda posted this photo on her blog recently. What an amazing place! We missed this when we were in Madrid but I do remember having a fabulous lunch after we had been in The Prado (famous art museum with amazing art). For about $10 each we had a three course meal that had paella as an appetizer, then suckling pig, wide choice of desserts, and a half litre of wine each. 

I think this was in 1999 when a Spanish Colleague of Jim's had invited us to Spain and let us use a spare apartment he had in Madrid. We also visited them in their villa in the countryside. 

Spain seemed very cheap in those days compared to the UK and France. 

Creativity during the pandemic....you gotta love it!

Barcelona has a great idea of having plants as the audience for their concert. I think it's quite brilliant as it shows off the wonderful venue but not with the rather sad spectacle of empty seats.

How the plants might look.

Attendees of the first post-lockdown concert at Barcelona’s Liceu opera house next week will not need masks or gloves, nor will they be required to observe physical distancing.

But they might like to take along a nice comfy pot and a little water to prevent their roots from drying out as a string quartet serenades them, fittingly, with Puccini’s Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums).

Well aware of the need to return with a spectacle as grabby as a venus flytrap, the Catalan venue has announced a concert for 2,292 plants when it reopens next Monday. Non-vegetable music fans will also be able to enjoy the performance as it will be livestreamed.

According to the Liceu’s artistic director, Víctor García de Gomar, the Concert for the Biocene is intended to help us ponder the current state of the human condition and how, in lockdown, we have become “an audience deprived of the possibility of being an audience”.

Rest of the article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/17/spanish-opera-house-reopens-with-concert-for-plants-barcelona?fbclid=IwAR1_f2uJv28ic_EveCxlE5BK1gfJZpBeRIHYw_fFmTuvcrmUq0DLLg--dmw

Itty Btty Book Review: "A Gentleman in Moscow"

"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles

For the most part I really liked this novel about a "Former Person" ...an aristocrat being under house arrest in The Metropole, a famous hotel in Moscow. It did drag a bit at times but loved the ending. There is almost too much going on at times but generally pretty engaging.

The Count is a very sympathetic character and all the delightful recounting of past experiences in aristocratic life are intriguing and interesting but the reader does know how the proletariat lived before the revolution and of the very repressive antics of the Bolsheviks. The author creates the old privileged life along with the new. Still a world of privilege but for different people.

From goodreads:

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count's endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose

Driving in Vancouver in the 1960's

Although the story says it's newly released I have a feeling I've seen it or perhaps even posted it myself. 

The Ministry of Transportation just released a wonderful archival video from 1966! In it they drive from Horseshoe Bay, through downtown Vancouver, up Main street then onto Kingsway to Burnaby. It was part of their 'photologs' where they would mount a camera on a car and produce a film on 16mm.

In a blog post the Ministry states that "these roads were classified as provincial Highways 1 and 99 until the early 1970s. In fact, Kingsway was also a component of the Trans-Canada Highway until construction was completed on the current alignment of the TCH across the Fraser River on the Port Mann Bridge in 1964."

Pick up the story and the video here:

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/history/1960s-driving-in-vancouver-1934738?utm_source=Vancouver+Is+Awesome&utm_campaign=7008abda8d-Daily+060920&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f592a7afc0-7008abda8d-136521497

I'm with Shelley Fralic...

While I am loving reading about Paris in Lisa Anselmo's blog these days, I have no desire to really go anywhere other than Palm Springs. Fralic says she'll never give up Palm Springs either. My friend, Linda, can't wait to get travelling again and is really missing it. I hope things get back to normal before too long so she can feed her wanderlust and Shelley and I can get back to our wonderful desert oasis.

Benjamin keeps posting lots and lots of photos of paradise on FB...

Evening in PS.

Article: No More Tckets to Ride

It’s outright boomer heresy to say so, for if the world has been our oyster, as we are interminably reminded, why on Earth would anyone so blessed be so cavalier in shucking off the opportunity to explore it fully?

After all, travel is meant to enrich us, enlighten us, expose us to culture and humanity and the illumination that as a people, despite our differences from one border to the next, we are one. To travel, goes the inculcation, is to experience life.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Here’s why I hate it. Not that I always did. Just that I do now.

Where once planes, trains and automobiles were the passport to new adventures, today the skies, rails and roads no longer hold that magical lure to uncharted territory.

Getting there, getting anywhere, is now mostly a crushing chore. Security checks, patdowns, unruly masses, pricey hotels, cramped airless planes, trashy trinkets, bed bugs, jammed freeways, pickpockets and armed guards.

Rest of the article"
http://eedition.thewhig.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

P.S. The exception I suppose would be those wonderful and reasonable bus tours Maureen takes but we'd have to be living in Europe to take advantage of those.