Wednesday 30 November 2016

November 2016 by the Numbers

Why 'By the Numbers'? 
While I'm much more concerned with quality as opposed to quantity, sometimes it's just fun to look back and reflect on what you've done in a specific window of time. Taking a look at what you've done often might be telling . . . here's to hoping that we engage in joyous activities regularly, and perhaps we can learn something from reflecting on how we've spent some of our time, and make changes if need be accordingly. The overall hope here is to celebrate the smaller joys in life, enjoying a measure of gratitude for the everyday and commonplace, as well as the rare and extraordinary.

November 2016 by the numbers:



- Seventy bulbs planted. I'm excited to see what blooms in our gardens in the spring!
- One of my favourite author's most recent book in my hot little hands!


 - One birthday luncheon at a quaint cafe celebrated with my dear friend S. And, borrowing the bucket list item from another friend, we've committed to "be in the pictures".
 - One amazing evening at a session of the Wild Writers Literary Festival where I was able to hear and meet my long-time favourite author, Guy Gavriel Kay, (he's even more brilliant than I'd imagined!), as well as listen to a wonderful interview between him, author Rosemary Sullivan, and host Craig Norris. A fantastic event! 


 - Four of us took shelter from the blinding sunlight by deeking into a theatre to see 'Trolls', a fun and colourful movie about optimism, positivity and working together.


- Two enjoyed a morning coffee date (my first coffee beverage since returning from my retreat last month!) after a lovely date night the eve before out at 'Berlin' (how spoiled we are, and how thankful to Gramma for having our girls over!).



- Five of us shared a gorgeous Autumn day, walking through the woods and getting 'that chickadee feeling' together.





- First signs of the festive season appear on my chai latte!



- Nineteen years for which I'm so grateful Kieran, my cousin's son, was here on this Earth, making it a better place. How sad we are to have lost him this month, and how our family misses him. 

- Countless letters, notes and lists written and left with love - and of course with the need to pass along my need to organize - before heading off to San Francisco.




- Seven wonderful days shared with Mom in San Francisco and the surrounding areas!




- Two pals share a day of favourite things and places. My heart sang being in their happy presence.

- Four of us were both moved and inspired by 'Queen of Katwe'.



- Eight years of E, our amazing, joyful, spirited, kind, determined and talented mighty mite were celebrated! And it may be at 25 years of service that you get a gold watch, but apparently 8 years is when the digital sport watch is most happily and proudly received!



- One plate of egg salad sandwiches, cut into squares, with no crusts, and toothpicks, specifically requested and made with love for the birthday girl's after-school snack.



- Two fantastic swim meets for H this month, and one for E, too!! How I love to watch them swim!



- Weekly visits over tea with friends, some near, some further; some with old friends, and some with newer. Feeling so fortunate to have this time :)



- First snow of the season arrived this month.



- 500 new tree lights bought and strung, and two little elves got busy decorating our Christmas tree!

- Oodles of noodles at our fave kitschy restaurant in London, 'Spageddy Eddy's' - E's choice for birthday-dinner-out :)

- Second field trip of the school year that I've had the good fortune to attend as a parent volunteer! E and I had a fantastic day with her classmates at Crawford Lake, where we explored the Wendat village and its longhouses and learned about the native Iroquois people who lived there 600 years ago.


- Over 25 years of friendship shared with my dear friend J and we celebrated her special day with sangria.



 - Only seven more days until H and I take off for New York City!! We're celebrating our birthdays together in the city that never sleeps, excited to soak up the sights and the festive spirit that will surely be in the air.

Tuesday 29 November 2016

San Francisco, Day Three: Saturday, November 12, 2016


This morning we had to wake by an alarm, as we were scheduled to take a day tour down the coast. I'm not typically a bus tour kinda gal, but in some cases they just make sense, and this trip was one of those times. Neither Mom nor I felt any kind of burning desire to drive in San Francisco or even around the surrounding areas, so renting a car was not our best option. We wound up booking two well-thought-out bus tours, and this day was our first. I also have to admit that I let myself very much play the role of the child in the planning for this trip. While I do love trip planning generally, I've had more opportunities of late to do so, and I rather welcomed the chance to sit back a bit more and follow Mom's lead. While I'd been planning for my retreat in October and for a get-away to come soon with H, my Mom put her energies into our San Francisco trip, and I am ever so grateful for that.

After checking in and boarding the bus, we headed down the coast towards Monterey, enjoying the gorgeous coastal scenery as we drove and stopped at several lookouts. The deep blue of the Pacific Ocean and sky stretched out before us like an endless quilt that looked as if it could envelope the world, its cotton batting seemingly coming loose at the shoreline as the waves rolled up onto the sand and crashed into the rocky cliffs.





We reached Monterey in time for lunch, which we enjoyed at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant & Market while sitting on a patio overlooking the ocean. We were pleasantly surprised at how good the food was, and our waitress was so much fun, quizzing us on 'Forrest Gump' trivia whenever she stopped at our table. Strolling along Cannery Row for a bit both before and after eating, we stretched our legs before reboarding the bus to continue on down the coast.
Cannery Row in Monterey.



Our drive now took us along some of the most beautiful coastal views I've ever seen. The fog played some interesting tricks on us, rolling out in full force as we left Monterey and leaving us shrouded in grey mists, and then retreating just as quickly to once again show off the incredible California coastline a few minutes's drive later. Mother nature can be fickle, indeed! We were treated to a ride along 17-Mile Drive, and soaked up the beauty of Monterey Bay and the Santa Cruz mountains, Spanish Bay, Point Joe, and prestigious golf courses including Poppy Hills, Spyglass Hill, and Pebble Beach. One of my favourite spots was The Lone Cypress, a solitary cypress tree which has, according to a brochure we picked up, "prevailed on its rocky perch for more than 250 years." The indomitable spirit of both nature and man - who have installed fences and cables to add protection - when working well together, seem embodied by this staunch tree that stands alone in the sunshine, wind, rain, and fog, surviving Pacific storms year after year.





The Lone Cypress


The eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
Our tour's final destination was Carmel-by-the-Sea, and we arrived in the quaint town in the late afternoon. Strolling through the town at dusk, silhouettes and shadows were our guides, and a magical quality infused the experience as we explored into twilight before heading back to the bus by the light of the moon.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Carmel!
 

Numerous shops featured enticing indoor/outdoor alleyways and corridors, some leading to secret courtyards and gardens, others to the next street. These were, as most of you will know about me, right up my alley (pun fully intended!).

A quaint patio in Carmel-by-the-Sea by twilight.  
The bus ride back to San Francisco in the dark was made fun as Mom and I played games together on her i-Pad and watched the on-board movie, "Mrs. Doubtfire", which was filmed in San Francisco. We were certainly ready to sleep fitfully after this full day of touring, but of course, we were also set for further explorations the next day. Stay tuned for more from San Fran!

My wonders: Have you ever been to Monterey, 17-Mile Drive and/or Carmel-by-the-Sea? What were your impressions? What are some of your favourite coastal views? 

Monday 28 November 2016

Worthy Read #3: "The Buddha in the Attic" by Julie Otsuka




Otsuka, Julie. The Buddha in the Attic. New York: Random House Inc., 2011.

While in San Francisco earlier this month I had the opportunity to visit a magnificent bookstore, 'City Lights Bookstore & Publishers', located on Columbus Avenue at Broadway in North Beach. Founded in 1953 and still known as "one of the few truly great independent bookstores in the United States," the very walls are steeped in poetry, and I deeply inhaled the happy scent of papyrus as we entered. Arched doorways, multiple floors boasting yet more sections of books, and a history that saw the shop as a meeting place for discussions about "anti-authoritarian politics and insurgent thinking" makes this bookstore a true gem for any lover of books and freedom. (www.citylights.com)



My own little slice of heaven.
 


The hand-written sign above the door reads, 
"Abandon all despair, Ye who enter here."
While at this marvelous store I selected a couple of books, including Julie Otsuka's Pen/Faulkner Award winning The Buddha in the Attic. This slip of a novel (it's a mere 129 pages long) reads like poetry, simple yet profoundly compelling, and pulls the reader into the hearts and minds of the countless Japanese women whose voices tell their story as a collective chant through Otsuka's masterful writing. The first-person plural narration sweeps us up into this choral song, and we trace the lives of these girls and women as they journey from their childhood homes in Japan to San Francisco as "picture brides", through their experiences as wives, workers, and mothers, right up until the Japanese internment during the second world war. We feel their disappointments and pain, their hardships and fears.

The following excerpt will give you a small but lovely taste of Otsuka's flavour:
"On the boat we could not have known that when we first saw our husbands we would have no idea who they were. That the crowd of men in knit caps and shabby black coats waiting for us down below on the dock would bear no resemblance to the handsome young men in the photographs. That the photographs we had been sent were twenty years old. That the letters we had been written had been written to us by people other than our husbands, professional people with beautiful handwriting whose job it was to tell lies and win hearts. That when we first heard our names being called out across the water one of us would cover her eyes and turn away - I want to go home - but the rest of us would lower our heads and smooth down the skirts of our kimonos and walk down the gangplank and step out into the still warm day. This is America, we would say to ourselves, there is no need to worry. And we would be wrong." (Otsuka, p.18)

Reading about this time in American history leading up to and including the internment of the Japanese following the bombing of Pearl Harbour, I felt myself reeling now and again, the hairs on my arms rising in goosebumps as this injustice born of fear played out on the pages before me. And while I so badly wanted to shake my own fears away with placating thoughts such as, "But that was a long time ago and we've come so far from those days," I could not deceive myself thus. The Buddha in the Attic is not only a beautifully written book, it is an important book. It stands as yet one more reminder that we need to learn from our mistakes, so as never to repeat them. I believe that we are standing on something of a precipice these days, and that the pendulum of society is balancing precariously upon it. And for the good of all, we need to remember that this Earth supports one race: the human race. 

Straying from my book review slightly, I'd like to share with you a framed poem that I discovered on the top floor of City Lights. Written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the co-founder of the bookstore, I couldn't get over the relevance of this poem today, and I felt that, though he wrote the words years before, it could have been written on that very day as I stood there a few weeks ago. This gave me an eerie sense of destiny predetermined, which then gave way to a more realistic thought: we, as humans, all too often cycle through our mistakes repeatedly, sometimes with slight variations on the theme, but nevertheless, we ride the ferris wheel over and over again. I've copied the poem below, and have also included the photo I snapped of the framed words that I read.




Pity the Nation
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world 
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty


~Lawrence Ferlinghetti

My wonders: Have you read this book, or Otsuka's other novel, When the Emperor was Divine? If so, what were your thoughts? Do you enjoy reading historical fiction? If so, please share any favourite titles in this genre with me. And what are your thoughts on Ferlinghetti's poem? Oh, how I'd enjoy talking to the poet today - believe he's 97 years old - about how his words from years ago apply so aptly today.