This just came up on my FB so just had to post it. Richard ran the Victoria Marathon that day and finished all safe and sound. I seem to remember there was some weather problem that worried me.We were in Vancouver. This year he and Grace are doing wine tasting in the Okanagan.
The New Leaf project is a joint study started in 2018 by Foundations for Social Change, a Vancouver-based charitable organization, and the University of British Columbia. After giving homeless Lower Mainland residents cash payments of $7,500, researchers checked on them over a year to see how they were faring.
All 115 participants, ranging in age between 19 and 64, had been homeless for at least six months and were not struggling with serious substance use or mental health issues. Of those, 50 people were chosen at random to be given the cash, while the others formed a control group that did not receive any money."
Impossible to fold, of course.
"All hail Bertha Berman, who on this (actually yesterday) day in history filed a patent for the fitted sheet. "Berman, an African-American from Forest Hills, N.Y., invented the fitted bedsheet, patented on this day in 1959. Her design featured a detachable band that encircled the sides of the mattress, keeping it in place and allowing the sheet to be easily removed for washing. This eliminated the need for flat-sheet corner tucks, the so-called hospital corners that were as hard to master as they were unreliable. Berman’s bedsheet was an improvement, and other designs followed, but Alberta’s Gisele Jubinville wanted a better one. In 1992, she patented the design we know today – a sheet with deep pockets on the corners that wrap under the mattress. “I was fed up with fitted bed sheets that didn’t stay on the mattress,” Jubinville said by phone. “I didn’t know how to sew, [but] I’m about solving a problem.” - Globe and Mail.
We never thought of doing something like this probably because we didn't have necessary money. I don't think kids today could grasp how funny we thought knocking on a door then running away was. They were simpler times for sure!
Ian Forsyth posted this on FB...for you, Mary S.
Mary showed me that these trees have a special beauty. I think I disliked them since there was a huge one on my street when I was a kid and was afraid of it. I actually crossed the street to avoid it. You pretty much had to walk around it anyway becaue the branches were so low.
"The tree towers over the big, beautiful Craftsman house. I would think it was probably planted when the house was built."
Well, of course, everyone knows I'm a sucker for these colours and designs.
"The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett
This is vintage Ann Patchett...what an amazing writer!
It’s about three generations of an American family who have mixed attachments to a family home in the suburbs of Philadelphia and their interactions with each other. It spans about 50 years beginning around the end of WW II. It’s an imaginative story filled with twists and turns and lots of suspense. It deals with obsession, love, hate, compassion, and forgiveness in original ways
I think I've probably posted some of his paintings before. I really do love his work.
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Modernism Week in PS began with a week in February and then expanded to two weeks and now they have a week or so in the Fall. It's been a great success in bringing tourists from all over the world. One year we attended quite a few events and then we mainly went to the free events.
It looks like it's going to be online this year and I imagine the February event will be online too. They seem to be charging normal prices and I wonder if that will work out for them. Of course, it's all the tourists who come and spend money that really help the PS businesses. That won't be happening and the Canadian snowbirds won't be coming either. Of course, we have a real soft spot for PS and the people there so really hope things get better for them soon. And the moment we can we'll be back to our winter paradise.
The Rancho Mirage Writers Festival has been postposed until January, 2022. The tickets sell out immediately for this event (I believe they are around a thousand US although I think they may be less now due to a major donor). They don't appear to be giving the option of refunds and the tickets will carry over.
https://mwkly.com/places/events/how-to-attend-the-modernism-week-fall-preview-online-experience/
“Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?”
― Erma Bombeck
“When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911. ”
― Erma Bombeck
“All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. ”
― Erma Bombeck
“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.”
― erma bombeck
“Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.”
― Erma Bombeck
“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”
― Erma Bombeck
“Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.”
― Erma Bombeck
“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”
― Erma Bombeck
“When humor goes, there goes civilization.”
― Erma Bombeck
Primo’s Mexican Grill is owned by Joel and Jaclynn Villanueva, who live in White Rock with their two sons. We had an opportunity to sit down with owner Jaclynn and hear the nostalgic story of one man’s dream in the 1960’s. Joel’s grandfather, Primo Villanueva, a football player for UCLA, was drafted by the BC Lions in the 1960’s. When he and his wife made the move north, they discovered there wasn’t much of a Mexican community here. In fact, there wasn’t even a single Mexican restaurant in the province! So they opened Primo’s Mexican Grill to bring a little Latin flavour to the Vancouver neighbourhood of W. 12th and Granville. Primo’s wife, affectionately known as Nana Zina, developed the recipes and the restaurant thrived under their ownership for 25 years. After that, his son and daughter-in-law, Mark and Doreen, took the reins for another 25 years. In keeping with tradition, the restaurant was passed down to their children. For several reasons including a change in the feel of the neighbourhood, Joel and his brother decided to close the doors to Primo’s but never gave up on their family’s legacy. Five years later, Primo’s is alive and projected to do very well on Marine Drive, right across the pier where Cielo’s stood for 20 years. In addition to the new location, the Villanueva family is celebrating Grandfather Primo being inducted into the B.C. Restaurant Hall of Fame as a pioneer in the industry.
So, what’s changed? Not Nana Zina’s recipes! However, Jaclynn excitedly told me that there will be some additions to the menu as well as an expansion in the way people are able to order food combinations. Alongside the extensive choice in Tex-Mex meals, tequila-lovers will rejoice at the options at the tequila bar. Aged from blanco to extra anejo, patrons can select their tequila and then choose to sip it straight or add it to a favourite margarita.
During the soft launch, tables are available by reservation only as the staff prepares for an anticipated mid-June opening. The current menu is a teaser of what is to come. Here’s what we ate and loved:
Primo’s Signature Wings
Chicken Enchiladas and Chiles Rellenos
A comment one young woman made recently in praise of RBG was that because of her she could get a credit card in her own name. I imagine I am like most of my similar aged friends whose credit cards are in their husband's names as the primary cardholder. That's the way it had to be.
The Original 9, a group of nine women's tennis players who symbolically signed $1 contracts 30 years ago in September 1970 to help establish the first women's professional tennis tournament. Their dream was to get the same level of recognition enjoyed by their male counterparts, and their actions laid the foundation for the success of women's tennis as we know it. While there's still a ways to go for equal pay and recognition, the success of tennis stars like Serena Williams and US Open Champ Naomi Osaka is proof that their legacy lives on. "When I see them getting big checks and winning matches and seeing all the attention they get, then our dreams have come true," says Billie Jean King, a member of the Original 9. "They're living our dreams. And I love it."
My mother turns 100 years old today, totally screwing up my retirement-budget calculations.
I put her longevity down to stubbornness. She never was a quitter, except when it came to cigarettes. (She once paid a hypnotist to help her stop smoking. It didn’t work but she couldn’t stomach the idea of wasting the money, so went cold turkey anyway.)
Or maybe we should credit her internal strength. She might have lost her mobility, much of her hearing, most of her eyesight and, occasionally, her teeth, but she retains her ability to laugh, particularly at herself. A brittle person couldn’t do that.
When COVID-19 nudged her beloved little brother out the door in March, we feared the loss might be the end of her, but no, she soldiered on. Her response shouldn’t have been a surprise, given what she told me a few years ago after I, reluctantly, passed on some heartbreaking news that I thought might buckle her. “Listen,” she said. “There will be half a dozen times in life when you will be blindsided by something so painful that it brings you to your knees. You won’t think you will ever get up again. But you will.”
She should know. She arrived in 1920 just as the Spanish flu pandemic finally petered out, having killed maybe 50 million people over a two-year span. That’s 50 times as many as have died from COVID-19, and at a time when the global population was a quarter of what it is today.
Her birth came exactly four years after four machine gun bullets left her father half-dead in the blood and mud of the Somme during the First World War. He survived, went on to a life as a CNR locomotive engineer (as children, my mother would admonish us to hold our noses whenever we crossed tracks belonging to the rival Canadian Pacific) but he always had what was referred to as a game leg that required ongoing operations.
Her family bounced around Alberta chasing work during a decade-long Great Depression that began when she was eight years old, and a world war that broke out just as she turned 19. She still talks of those friends who marched off, never to return — or to come back invalided to the Calgary hospital where she volunteered. In those days, mothers would run inside their houses, slam the doors and draw the drapes when the telegram man appeared on the street, such was the fear of getting one of those dreaded “Regret to advise that your son…” messages from the military.
The post-war world brought stability, but never prosperity (though not having much gave her empathy for those with even less). Nor was motherhood always the dream she imagined. There was the discovery of her drunken teenage son face down in the driveway in the traditional bracing-for-an-earthquake position one 3 a.m. He might also have mooned the diners while strolling past the Highlander Restaurant, not knowing there were family members — and their friends — inside. I like to think these experiences helped her build character.
My sisters, who would prefer to remain anonymous but are Betty Jakel and Maggie Knox of Kamloops, also contributed. They would wait until Mum was seated in a washroom stall at Woodward’s, ask her a question that demanded a long answer, then quietly back out the door so that the next woman to enter would be treated to a rambling monologue from the lone crackpot in cubicle three.
Mum gave as good as she got, though, retaliating by sending us to school with wax paper sandwiches, or driving like Vin Diesel, causing some of us to lose our hair early. In her 90s, as her visiting children exited her home she would stand in her window and feebly warble “don’t leeeave me,” which would cause passersby to glare at us reprovingly, which filled her with joy.
Today, we’ll gather outside that window, grouped in one bubble after another, and bellow at her over the phone. If we’re lucky, she’ll take those teeth out to recite “She sell seashells by the seashore,” just to alarm/entertain the great-grandchildren. Fun, but hardly the celebration turning 100 deserves.
One hundred years! On the day she was born, Babe Ruth got a hit for the New York Yankees. Mainland B.C. had eight kilometres of paved highway. Canada had 300,000 automobiles, as compared to 36 million today. The province was holding a plebiscite on whether to end Prohibition. Ballpoint pens, credit cards, sunglasses, bubble gum and the sale of sliced bread were all in the future. She was born the year before Amelia Earhart began taking flying lessons.
She has not seemed particularly fazed by the pandemic. While it might overwhelm those of us who have lived free of real — or at least generational — adversity, to her it’s just another crisis. Think six months of being locked inside with Netflix is hard? Try six years of war. Try losing most of those you have ever loved.
That’s her 100-year lesson. If she can endure, so can we.
jknox@timescolonist.com
We went to The Sylvia for lunch and walked around Denman and the seawall for a while. Lots of people around Denman and saw old and new places.
September 17th, 2020 — Forest fire smoke obscures a sailboat off Whytecliff Park in West Vancouver.
I was wondering who wrote this wonderful poem that fits Ruth Ginsburg perfectly. Ah...no surprise when I came to the end to see who was the poet...another one of the greats.
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
—Maya Angelou
Stanley Park has meant so much to us and so glad it's back for everyone.
This change will come into effect on Saturday, September 26. The configuration from traffic cones, equipment, and signage will be dismantled starting at 8 pm the previous day, which will necessitate the temporary overnight closure of Stanley Park.
