Gilda's Club

Gilda's Club is housed in the old firehall on Lombard Street in Toronto, where Gilda Radner was featured in Second City with John Belushi.

After dropping out of the University of Michigan where she was studying drama, Gilda moved to Canada and made her stage debut in the 1972 Toronto production of Godspell with another soon-to-be Saturday Night Live cast member, John Belushi. After a brief stint with Second City, an improvisational comedy troupe, they both moved to New York.

Gilda Radner: a little slip of a thing with ordinary girl-next-door looks, a Cocker Spaniel hairstyle, and twinkling eyes– “American’s Sweetheart,” impossibly dead at age 42.

Postcards Exchange

Our art group has been having an exchange of postcards. This is one I made by clipping bits from an old book I found at the local thrift store for 25 cents. It's called Sewing Made Easy by Mary Lynch and Dorothy Sara, published by Garden City in 1950. I cut the shirt and pants from bits of cloth.

The words are from the section entitled You and Your Accessories ... "general instructions on selecting hats, shoes, stockings, gloves, furs, handbags, and jewelry. Specific instructions for choosing accessories if you are tiny, if you are tall if you are plump". The quote in brown isn't from that book ... it's from Gilda Radner. I miss that woman

I base my fashion sense
on what doesn't itch

Spring

The Body Book

This is another unfinished and ongoing recycling project. I saw these remarkable images of body tattoos in a magazine, and knew I wanted to keep them. I clipped them out, and now what to do with them?

I bought a children's board book at the Peninsula Community Thrift Shop for 15 cents. I scraped it and sanded it and painted it. I smoothed some different colors of chalk along the torn edges of the pages. With some acrylic paint backgrounds I now had a place to paste the tattoo images






I love these images of women's bodies ... all shapes and sizes, colors and ages.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

Sending you hugs and kisses, wherever you are now.

This picture was taken a long time ago with one of those old cameras before digital.

Wish you were here with us now, but you're always in our hearts and minds.








Nan asked in the comments 'who was on his back' and also commented on the picture of me on the sidebar. So, here is another old picture ... same man, different child. This one is me. Quite a few years earlier, as you might imagine.

Paper Cranes

On most Saturdays we meet at the Men's Prison for a meditation group. M is a nun in the Tibetan tradition .... we meet in the dining hall with a small group of prisoners. Guards look on, but as yet none have joined us.

We meditate, drink tea and talk ... and fold paper cranes. We started with very large pieces of newspaper because it's easier to fold a large one when first learning. Many of them were set in flight about the hall ... like paper airplanes. We laughed a lot and ate all the cookies.





Over a few weeks, we gradually progressed to smaller and smaller models until the guys became familiar with the folds. They hung the cranes in their rooms when they went back. They don't live in cells here, but in blocks of duplexes scattered about the grounds.

Eventually I became known as "the crane lady"

Enso

The universal enso on my new t-shirt symbolizes enlightenment and oneness with nature. Zenga are the ink paintings and calligraphy of Japanese Zen Buddhist monks from approximately 1600 to the present.

The calligraphy reads:

Pure white birds set against

emerald waters,

Green mountains ablaze

with blooming flowers.

Zen priest, Ed Brown, described how his teacher, Suzuki Roshi, said, "you all are enlightened until you open your mouth"

Spam

I learned to love Spam when I was living in Hawaii. David and I would walk down the 10th Avenue hill, past the orchid nursery, past the pool and the school to have a meal of Spam Musubi at Rainbow Market. We sat outside at the beat-up old picnic table and drank ice tea while waiting for our orders.



Hawaii holds the honor of being the Spam capital of the United States. During World War II, Spam became a staple in the diets of troops overseas and in the war-torn countries such as England and islands such as Hawaii that had trouble getting fresh meat. Hawaiians continued to consume Spam following the war. It is Hawaii's soul food.

Sadly, I can't eat Spam now because of the high sodium content, but I long for it each time I pass by those shelves in the market.

January 2009

We have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!

William Arthur Ward (1921-1994)

with thanks to my cousin in Alberta

for the photo of Sun in Fog

and to my friend in New Hampshire

for the William Ward quote

Snowbound

Haven't been out of the apartment for six days and getting anxious because I'm almost out of bananas ... WAAHH. The car is buried ... tried to shovel it out yesterday with a dust pan but finally gave up. We're not equipped for this on southern Vancouver Island ... you can see a few pictures here

Knitting and listening to audiobooks There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell by Laurie Notaro and The Time Traveler's Wife. This morning I pulled out some paints and ink and started to play


In Gwen Diehn's The Decorated Journal, she describes a technique for pouring colours.

I used cobalt teal and olive green acrylic paints and walnut ink poured onto a large sheet of watercolour paper. It ended up looking like a Jackson Pollack gone horribly wrong. Small sections looked pretty good, so I cut it up and have been using them for making cards. The first one is going to Nan in New Hampshire to thank her for the beautiful calendar she sent after I won the draw on her blog Letters from a Hill Farm. I wonder how many days it will be until I can get to the post office.

Winter Solstice

Rain sliding down the wind chimes
Cloud hidden solstice moon
Winter in the Northwest

Recycling

For this journal I used denim from some old jeans that I used to cover a plain composition book. That's me at the front porch of the house on Perth Avenue in Toronto.

An old photo was transferred onto a scrap of plain white cotton fabric and sewn onto a piece of burlap from a potato sack.




This is a portfolio cover made from dark blue felt ... again burlap and photo transfer onto rough cotton dyed with coffee. Corded ribbon ties from the scrap box.

For Joe

In August we'll pick wild blackberries. The bushes will be loaded with berries by then. They grow thick and dense on both sides of the trail. Some folks bring ladders so they can reach the biggest and ripest and juiciest at the top.

A pail full is enough for a pie, and two or three pails full for jam. But be warned ... my limit is one or two handsful

The berries on the outside of the bushes, the ones that are within easy reach, have all been picked off. The thorns are treacherous. Scratches and curses will follow, and I get really cranky.

Antique Kimonos

A calligraphy exercise. Our assignment was to do something Asian. I'd recently watched a gorgeous movie called The Scent of Green Papaya, and I felt a longing for my home in Hawaii.

For this one, I put down a pale wash of permanent rose and cadmium yellow, sketched a few leaves and tinted them pale green that I mixed with cobalt blue and cad yellow hue.

kermit says

Time is fun
when you're having flies

Grandma Cahoon's House

work in progress

Lots of vacations spent here in Southern Alberta ... the old house has been designated as 'heritage property' now

What's for Breakfast?

One day recently my friend Nan in New England posted this quote from "Winnie the Pooh". I like it so much I decided to borrow it for my Wellness Notebook


"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Japanese Lady with flute

Another paper batik









see the first ones here

Mission BC

Looking down the hill from our hotel window ... the highway below and mountains in the distance. the home building center and the Sikh temple

Best Meal in Newfoundland

Fish and Brewis

Dinner at the Viking Village in L'Anse aux Meadows ... brewis is another name for hard bread or hard tack. And for dessert, a Newfy Iceberg - coffee, screech and ice cream