Olympic Deja-vu
There’s a familiar scent in the air. It’s frantic, it’s chaotic, it’s riotous, and its secured. It’s in our changing skyline, our slight population surge, and it’s smeared across that huge hotel across from the art gallery… yes, world… this is Canada, in case you didn’t know already.
Even my educational institution, Simon Fraser U, has become a major traffic hub for the games. Doitch fills the airwaves at the downtown campus. Tile has turned hardwood and faux walls are in place. Blue-lit backdrops and movie set spotlights hang from above. Harbour centre is now recognizable as the German Haus of Broadcasting.
Burnaby Mountain campus is hip-hop-happenin’ too. The concrete roads are being ripped up and smoothed out overnight, an increase of bus police making sure everyone is loaded onto the 145 safe and securely. The pavement scene yesterday was very reminiscent of my experiences in Beijing, a few months prior to the summer 2008 olympics.
Here is an exerpt from my travelblog at the time…
“… Streets are being ripped up, torn up, and built up… the same goes for parks… grass being lifted off the ground to make way for a brand new sheet of greens to be laid down the next day… and even the trees are changing from brown to green overnight – literally… one day they were there, the next they were uprooted, leaving large holes in the sidewalk, and a few days later new trees put back in! Not to mention the what must be thousands of dollars being spent of putting millions of potted pink red purple and orange and yellow flowers into every inch of soil lining the roads in the Chaoyang district. If there’s any place that can master a full city makeover in such a fast period- its Beijing. The feeling in the air right now is so different than just 3 weeks ago. Summer is coming, the games are beginning, and this is going to be BIG.
Feverosa Olympica” (read more of this blog here)
I don’t think we’ve been transplanting grass or trees, but we’re definately taking the paralleled Winter approach by choppering around bundles of fluffy white snow. The biggest difference between the two cities, however, was an unquestioned sense of olympic optimism among the locals in Beijing… and a +$900m security budget in Vancouver to stave off rioters.
I’d be a hypocrite to fully support the anti-olympic movement now… the Olympic Fever has found me a small pocket of cash to be made in the next few weeks as an Ambassador to the cbc… Watch out for my big shiny whites grinning away and fumbling through ni haos, bonjours, and guten tags. hola!
Going for a lil cycle around the seawall now… see what sticky situations I can spy… these next few weeks are going to be fun! stay tuned.
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Tags: fever, olympics, sfu
neck muffler
i made a thingy! stiched every knot, minus the ones i missed (a few), hooked every tog, needled every noddle… all part of my plan to age 50 years overnight, or else join the growing ranks of people my age finding peace, love, happiness, time to bitch, and a guerilla revolution through l’art des crafts.
don’t know if i’m skilled enough for guerilla status yet… but i’ve casted on to the trend.
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print ‘n press
hopped outside a few times this weekend. once, to nearly cross paths with a cougar in an open field, twice to see three river otters chase one another along the sea splash at taylor beach, and third for a dusky walk along whiffin spit. mmm.
the other hours of daylight had me drawing carving inking printing and pressing over 100 thank you cards for all the donations we received for the very well attended Metchosin Kids With Cancer silent auction on friday.
linoblock prints, i missed you. Hannah Firmin, i wish my skillz were more like yours.
below are some photos of how i like to mess up my mother’s kitchen… and that dusky walk.
tchussie!
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Tags: art, lino block prints, metchosin
winter splinter
today my palms are sprinkled with a few pricks of red from this afternoon’s adventure down the steps to the woodshed, chopping some kindling for the woodstove. i traipse from room to room brewing tea and tending to my mother dearest, who has fallen ill this morning, and, predictably, the fire is out in minutes. keep it stoked, keep it stoked. you’d think that having lived in a house where the equation of chopped wood + crinkled paper + lit match = warm fire has been an everyday essential since i was a tot, i’d have the hang of it by now.
the fire’s been burning for about 2 hours, since my one brush with the outdoors today to meet my old next door neighbour for a little tea n’ chat at our favourite corner cafe, the broken paddle. pulling into the lot, a small flood of guilt washed over me as i quickly noted one lone bicycle drying under the awning above the cafe door, a soaking wet reflective vest sitting on the saddle. i had promised myself yesterday that i would bike the 25 minute ride over kangaroo road to the cafe, but my mind changes as easily as the the island weather patterns when rain is involved. (not that i didn’t survive 7 solid days of rain cycling through germany this past july!)
expecting to see some kind of fit old fogie at the coffee counter (there are many out this way), haley and i were surprised to see another young metchosin-born-and-rosen, neighbor/school-chum, hardly-recognizable-because-you-haven’t-seen-them-forever friend of ours, mariko. “it’s beautiful out there! metchosin in the fall, i’d forgotten how beautiful it is,” she said with a grin. she was apparently not at all phased by the rain, but instead, thrilled about being home from a year woofing and cycling throughout Japan on a single geared, granny-styled frame. although details of my bike tour through Europe consisted of 20 people and a support vehicle, i don’t think it separated our bond too much. looks like the thing we most shared in common, however, was the desire to return home to metchosin, as many of us seem to do… even if just for a minute.
here’s a pic of some autumn apples that i stole from in front of our old house on rocky pt. yesterday (which is apparently going to be up for sale sometime soon if a few hundred people want to go in on it with me!).
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Tags: metchosin
a big tree!
meares island, tofino.
home to the most spectacular ancient forest giants i’ve ever seen. look at this thing! gawsh darn, if trees could talk.
the wcwc is in the midst of one of the most important environmental campaigns in this region. their pitch is to “save old growth forests and ban raw log exports” in an attempt to get the BC Liberal government to stop logging beautiful old growth forests like this one, and make the switch sooner, rather than later, to sustainably logging second growth forests instead. because once you get rid of these puppies, its all going to be second growth anyway. this action wouldn’t be putting an end to logging and forestry jobs on the island, it would just work to preserve our productive old growth forests (73% of which have already been chopped down!) for wildlife habitats and future generations alike to enjoy… just as much as i enjoyed our hike through the torrential downpours this weekend.
more info about their current campaign here.
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Tags: tofino, trees
wild (wet) world
i am home. surprise!
sitting in my mom’s metchosin home in her little office surrounded with books with titles like “Mushrooms Demystified”, “Food Plants of Interior First Peoples”, and right beside them (the real treat), “Myxomycetes: A Handbook of Slime Molds”. sun hustles in the window coming from behind angelic clouds billowing up from a few outstanding firs and cedars that will stay rich and dark all winter long. beads of hail threw themselves at our wooden deck outside the kitchen doors this morning as my mother made her ancient recipe tea biscuits which i had so been longing for. (i butchered the recipe into rock cakes in an attempt to recreate the magical biscuits while in germany. never trust baking powder with a german translation of backpulver…)
after a traumatizing 38 hours in transit from berlin to metchosin, including a rockin 13 hours of sleep-on-the-cold-floor, eat-chez-mcdonalds-for-breakfast in the paris cdg airport, i felt a sense of shell shock and have continued to have a strong inclination not to leave this house on camas hill for quite some time.
however, we all know that is a hard bargain to bet for someone who has barely taken off their travelling shoes.
My friend Byron Fry came over the other night to take some pictures, and by chance, told me about the Western Canada Wilderness Comittee’s trip to Tofino this weekend, and suggested i find a way to come along. the folks at wcwc are some of the most admirable people i know for their dedication to saving Old Growth Forests on Vancouver Island, and this weekend will serve as my first intentional walk into a (reeeeeally) old growth forest with two local Tlaoquiaht first nation’s guides to show us the way! truly exciting. plus, we get to learn from the best about how to boost our knowledge of environmental activism-y skills, as well. just in time, too, those skills may come in handy for any upcoming copenhagen events.
i’m a long, long ways away from where I was on monday, sleeping in late and pressing two little cups of breakfast coffee amidst celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, and i’m even further away from my psycho summer spent entirely on a bicycle… but things are good here at home. and i’m happy to be back on the wild west coast.
prost.
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16 reasons to Liebe Berlin
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- improvised meals
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- top quality graffitti (although my editting skills are not on par)
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- evening art openings
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- the infamous wall
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- outdoor sunday karakoke in the park
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- fashionable flohmarkts
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- big toys
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- big benches
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- soccer at the olympic stadium circa 1930-something
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- the indoor ping pong bar
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- outdoor ping-pong tables!
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- outdoor checkerboards!
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- cheap tasty sausage sold under the bahn station (always packed)
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- odd experimental art exhibits on monday nights
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- kitchy cookies
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- and because naturally, berlin is the captain of your heart.
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Tags: berlin, photo story
toilet wisdom
The beginning of an attempt to document the wisdom that inspires a certain few while in the confines of a public washroom. Berlin’s WCs are a mecca for colourful artistry and let seat wisdom or, “the writing on the stalls”, if you prefer. For some strange reason I am intrigued by these closet conversations and might just keep a regular tally of them!
Morgenrot Cafe, Berlin
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Tags: berlin, toilet wisdom
colour and bloom
In appreciation of the new chilly season which is worn on my shoulders daily, and after a long anticipated and over-extended wait, i’ve uploaded a few photos to my secret online gallery at flickr.com … hurrah!
Unfortunately i don’t quite understand flickr, so for now this is the numerical/alphabetical disaster of a link to see those clickers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39760784@N06/sets/72157622577916910/
I’d like to take a few and craft some stories around them… hopefully that project takes off sometime soon and I’ll have exciting treats on the saltd lion in der near futur.
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Tags: photos
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