Noon Hour Bliss

Working downtown has it's perks, one being a beautiful harbour within walking distance...

Two Bare Knuckle Rights

The Oilers doused the Flames last night...4-0...first game of what looks like it could be a great season, even with a bunch of rookies!

All the more sweeter being our rival team...Take that, Calgary!

Bird's Eye View

My sister is visiting for the week... we ended up at the North Island Recovery Centre, which is a non-profit organization that looks out for the Vancouver Island wildlife who are injured, orphaned or otherwise ill....


Albino Raven...

"NIWRA became internationally known when a local farmer unknowingly left a euthanised cow in a field for the eagles to eat. The cow had been euthanised with a barbiturate and should have been buried. Neighbours of the farmer began calling NIWRA when they discovered eagles lying lifeless on the ground. Due to the tremendous community support and the media, NIWRA, volunteers and veterinarians were able to save and release 25 of the 29 eagles that were found."


These eagles will eventually be released into the wild...


Teeth & Bone...

Silhouette...
Emily... what a cutie.


My own little wild animal...


Parksville Beach...

I AM. Canadian. EH!

Happy HST Day! A big shout-out to Gordon Campbell & the gov't for making our Canada Day extra memorable. Today marks the first day of our new tax: H.S.T. (Harmonized Sales Tax). Not that this is entirely new, as we've been anticipating this for months. Apparently 700,000 signatures on the 'No HST' petition means nothing to our leaders.

From this day forward, we British Columbians can look forward to paying a nice 12% tax on a whole new whack of things: restaurant bills, dry cleaning, electricity, heating, internet, home service calls by electricians, plumbers, carpenters, landscaping, lawn care, private snow removal, hotel rooms, taxis, campsites, domestic air, rail, boat and bus travel, magazines, home renos, car sales, gas, real estate commissions, massage therapy, vitamins, golfing, gym fees, sports lessons, live theatre tickets, hockey rink & hall rental fees, fitness training, haircuts, manicures, funeral services, legal fees, cigarettes, hunting/fishing licenses, investment portfolios. Yes, pretty much everything. Because we don't pay enough taxes already.

The good news? Starbucks is now offering FREE wi-fi! Maybe they feel badly about the HST hike on their lattes.

The even better news? Alcohol is going down.

And dammit, it is a day to be celebrated nonetheless!!!! Canada, our home and native land.

Cheers!

The Small Words In My Body

Believer I am, but admit it:
words will not cure everything.
Breathless unless in the mouth,
on a page, they are crushed black spiders.
They have nothing to do with the details
that make a life.
Every language is different and none exact.

Close the books then.
They cannot cure this.
On the shelf they clench
each other, spines rigid with silence.

This beaten leather bag,
my body, these buckets of blood and bone.
They are my own.
There's no way to drain or erase
myself.

Openings do not close.
My blood writes a story
I cannot believe.

I crash in a sea of white sheets.
I sharpen my scissors
and select a knife.
I clip and slice
the small words from here.

And the splitting cells,
the tale whispering in my blood
cannot protest
but shreds to silence.
I scrape out the scrawl, this mistake.

As with my kinder nightmares,
I forget just as I wake.

By Karen Connelly

The Get Out Migration ~ April 23-May 8... is a walk for wild salmon, happening on Vancouver Island now - to bring awareness to the Canadian government that we need to get salmon farms out of our BC waters. Farmed salmon are destroying our salmon.

Wild Pacific salmon are "anadromous", meaning born in fresh water. They migrate to the ocean, then return home to spawn and die. They can travel thousands of kilometres in their lifetime and still find their way back to the place they were born. Many don't make it back.

There's a wild salmon fish hatchery (more than one obviously) on the island where you can go and see all these salmon pooling in the fall; they've found their way back to their home waters and are at the end of their life. There's a viewing room where you can look at the salmon floating around half-dead. They slice open the bellies of the female and bucket the eggs in order to keep the cycle going. Gory, but necessary! The whole life cycle of the salmon is fascinating.

The biggest issues with farmed salmon are sea lice, which attack the baby salmon as they head out to sea...killing them off before they even have a chance, and competition. These Atlantic farmed salmon are escaping into our BC waters and out-competing our fish for habitat and food.

We need to do something about it before we lose all our fish.

Farmed and Dangerous - Educate yourself

Get Out Migration Itinerary - Join in on the fun

Stop buying and selling industrial farm fish.

Fish Farms Get Out of our Oceans!

The Eggs Are A-Cookin'

A man by the name of Doug Carrick mounted a camera at the top of a Douglas fir on Hornby Island, looking down upon an eagle's nest. Since then, he's broadcasted the daily lives of two Eagles... including three successful hatching of little Eaglets. Totally cool! Apparently, the Eagles did notice and were caught candidly scrutinizing the camera (picture ©hornbyeagles.com) Ma & Pa Eagle are right now incubating two eggs and they are expected to hatch this weekend!

Being the animal-lovin' nut that I am, I must say I find this completely intriguing:

The Hornby Island Eagle's Webcam

“With the camera, we could see every detail of their behaviour. I knew right away that this was really something remarkable. There were a lot of things I saw for the first time, especially the relationship between the two eagles. The female is the boss of the nest with the male rather timorous when near her. She is the larger of the two, tougher and more aggressive. He would bring a branch to the nest and she would grab it from him and put it in place. But he wanted a say in it also and would tug on the other end of the branch. Such tug-of-war contests would happen often and sometimes for as long as ten minutes. It wasn’t all marital harmony.” ~ Doug Carrick

Winnipeg

Yet another sleepless night. My mind was loco. Thoughts in the dark. I keep myself up. Out of nowhere I thought of Winnipeg.

It was June, I was 21 and having been as far East as the Alberta-Saskachewan border, excited to be venturing out, looking out a window on a nearly deserted plane. I was on my way to a leadership development course through the Centre for Christian Studies at the University of Winnipeg (for at that time I was highly involved in the music and youth activities at 'my mother's church').

This indie guy behind me struck up conversation as we gathered luggage from overhead compartments. We walked and laughed by the baggage carousel and his name was Cory.

I was arriving. He was arriving home. I had no idea where I was going. He knew the town like the back of his hand. He suggested we share a cab. I considered my options. It was a short long ride and at the end he offered his number. Said to call, he'd show me around. I did.

We met for an early dinner. He was a traveller, been all around the world and met people of all kinds. An interesting and cultured fellow. I was a wide-eyed girl from a big city. We drank some beer and wandered the streets of downtown, heritage Winnipeg. Past the parliament across the bridge. Admiring buildings. Stopping for coconut Gelato. Playing trivial pursuit with one another's history and budding philosophies. He was a few years older. But not by much. He walked me back to the entrance of my building where we shared an embrace and continued on. Mother-like figures awaited, worried but relieved.

We met again. He introduced me to his sister, in their home. We walked and talked and laughed some more. Chilled to the sounds of an ecclectic funk band with a female singer. Downed coke and rye and were consumed by giddiness. Pure and innocent fun between two souls who became fast friends for two weeks. We said we'd keep in touch. But, like others, ours had come to its end... full circle. And we moved on.

I met others during my time in Winnipeg... where I spread my wings and investigated my faith amongst a memorable group of coloured characters, a very liberal and feminist group of mostly women, a gay dude and a transvestite, where we challenged biblical patriarchy and partook in the gay pride parade and festivities. Few of us stayed in touch over the years... getting together for coffee and music, and writing emails. I learned of the suicide of one and wondered what went wrong, though we will never know. Gradually, we have all lost touch with each other. But have perhaps found more of ourselves along the way. These are some of the people that influence our lives, that challenge our views and give us more insight into life than we could ever hope to find by ourselves. People we share only a brief span of time with, but their memories and influence last a lifetime, if only just to remember here and there along the way.

For them, I'm grateful.

OH YEA!

Because we just need to see this one again:



Inspired by Martin @ This Rugged Life

Our Love Is But A Fire

I just bought Hauntario, the new album by The Wheat Pool, a Canadian indie/alt country band. They are marvelous, and no I'm not bias because they hail from Edmonton - my old hometown & stomping grounds. Something about their music kind of makes me all nostaligic. It's relatable. This is one of those cds that keeps you company on a long drive and never gets old. SO. GOOD.

If our love is but a fire then our hearts must be made of wood...

Extreme Storm Surgin'

Now here's a sport I think I can do...too.

Changing the way you look at the world. I like that. I like the entire concept. No two people have the same experiences. We are restricted to our own consciousness. Confined by our paradigms. We need to break out of these molds and live.

Live fully.

Life is short. We need reminders, because so often we forget. To look and see the world and experience the moments it offers. Dare. Dream. Laugh. More importantly, laugh at yourself. Give. Give to the world, your heart, your soul, your voice ~ in whatever way which makes sense to you. BE. Be brave. Be who you are. Be different. Be present. Be open to new ideas. Be willing to run, to leap and land on our feet or fall flat on our face. We need to have more faith in ourselves and more faith in others. Because we get each other through. We need to live a life congruent to our values, ideals and dreams. To never cease to wonder. To imagine what will be. To see all possibilities, when no one else will.

This is nothing new. But it never grows old.

Think about it.

This is your life.

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

~ Steve Jobs

Pregnant Women Pee 'A Lot'

The Trews, travelling all the way across the country from Antigonish, Nova Scotia (at least this is where they started out 'in the beginning'), graced us with an incredible acoustic show here in Nanaimo last night. They have a new album out, Friends & Total Strangers. Did I mention that I love musicians from the East Coast? They just breathe so much life into their lyrics & melodies. It was a thrill to hear these guys live, for sure. I hope they come back.

Unfortunately, the one song I wanted to capture (Locked Doors) was interupted half-way by the pregnant gal up the aisle who needed to get by on her trip to the loo for the tenth time! Ahhhh...C'est la vie!

Daniel Wesley opened for them. He's got some funky songs, I like his style. He hails from the little city of White Rock, BC, just across the water... We're practically neighbours. I should bake him some Nanaimo bars. The stage looked a whole lot bigger at the Port. iPods aren't very good for recording are they...

Good tune:

where will i go now
the life i knew is gone
someway and somehow
we all keep moving
on and on and on and on
tonight, tonight c'mon and
set me free from yesterday
and all it's haunted memories
but now it's closing time
and i don't wanna leave
i can't stop laughing,
i'm not even happy