First off, Cheryl, who has always worked tirelessly for the government and with the postcard project, and with the 'Keep Beth Alive' project has caught ‘Dread Lurgy Reanimated” which is a type of cold which seems to take 7 to 10 days, goes into the lungs and is really wretched. She caught it at a work retreat and is now suffering, too far for me to be able to bring her soup, or some hot lemon for her throat. If you want to send her a card please send it to:
Elizabeth McClung (for Cheryl)
P.O. Box 2560
Port Angeles, WA
98362
That would be really kind. If you want to be extra kind, please send pocky (actually you can send to both of us,
since pocky seems to go with bed days like, um, strong, red haired women taking a slo-mo shower go with an increased breath rate (Go Scully!).
I haven’t been out much but every time I go, I try to record something different. The fact that I have my own immune system literally chewing through my brain helps me get a ‘different’ perspective. This is what the trees look like outside the video store.
They remind me of the bamboo forest just outside Kyoto where the artists, poets and other outcasts from the royal court made an artists colony in their exile.
Trying to use up the blue cross while we had it, I had been to the optometrist and this was my reward (When I haven’t been hungry or thirsty for a couple years, and the only taste buds I have are at the back of my throat and in my nose, plus if I get excited I stop breathing, the whole motivation/reward thing gets odd). The optometrist dropped another of those little bombs, the ones that let me know that even if being ‘terminal’ is somehow in my mind, my body is changing, both rapidly and permanently for the worse. The muscles in my left eye (the one the eyepatch is on in pictures) aren’t working correctly. To avoid getting double images my brain has been more and more ignoring the left eye entirely. Inoperable, just another bit of the brain gone wrong.
She asked, “So have you found this has affected your driving?”
I told her, “Honestly, I can say that this eye problem has not diminished my driving one bit,
or caused any problems.” (Linda was above me restraining from strangling me).
Optomitrist: “Ohh?” puzzled.
Linda: “She doesn’t drive, since she passes out…”
Me: “Not EVERY time!”
Linda: “….and she has seizures.”
Me: “Those are getting less frequent.”
Linda: “So, no, she doesn’t drive.”
Me: “Yet! I haven’t had an accident in years!”
I have to hope that one day Linda will let me drive (or more like absent mindedly hand me the keys). Okay, true that now I can’t feel my legs as the massive bruises on the back of my legs Cheryl found this weekend indicated, but again, if those kids can do it with sticks and stuff in the movies, I am sure I can too.
We decided to go out to the Bengal Lounge, but getting in was, er, complicated and for wheelchairs involved starting a series of switchback ramps (four of them) which started behind the bus depot.
I was freezing! Once I got inside, then it was only an elevator ride up another three steps until the hallway to the Bengal lounge. The Conference Center which had this ‘maze for wheelchairs’ has posted next to the elevator for three steps the ‘Special Award for Excellence and Innovation of Design”. I have noticed that the further a wheelchair has to wheel, the more the designers applaud themselves. If 10 stairs can be turned into a 14 switchback series of ramps which take a quarter mile of wheeling – that is SURE to get an award.
We were not the only ones to want to go to the Bengal Lounge, and it had a long wait.
They were playing Jazz with piano and a double bass in the corner. Sadly, after talking with the native art experts for 30 minutes, I had a little TIA and passed out. Here I am after being propped up, you can see how the side closest to Cheryl is dead and the other side of the face is compensating.
But here are some of the masks we saw in the Gallery Quality stores in the Empress Hotel.
I have visited this store; it used to be at the end and have the largest collection of Inuit art outside the Canadian Government. Now they do all West Coast groups, and Linda and Cheryl found a mask by Hunt. It is sort of odd to have a sculpture on the wall by the same person in an exclusive Gallery. What we did find is that Mongo Hunt, the father of Richard Hunt and grandfather of Jason Hunt not just opened the carving shed at the BC Royal Museum, he built the long house inside (it is in the pictures of when I went to the museum – lowly lit to represent firelight with piped in sounds of light drumming and dancing). I loved hanging in that long house as a child, left at the museum while my grandparents got food for the trip back to the woods. I never thought that one man could have made it, and the totem poles inside, much less that I would met and talk to his son and have a commissioned piece by his grandson.
In the other gallery, they had more contemporary Native art including this amazing piece of Jade sculpture, which has three types of unfinished, finished and a special polish all of the SAME piece of connected Jade.
I know it is Jade because I have a few hunks sitting around, not quite as large as this from when I went with a couple 4 wheel drives, a chainsaw and a winch to a Jade mine where the Jade was helicoptered out. The price had dropped so Jade just sat in blocks on the ground. This underground fantasy with mermaid is far beyond anything I could have imagined looking at those unfinished blocks. I guess that diversity of vision is why I like human brains.
Well, the rule of three is that in any attempt for something new, 1 time it will be FANTASTIC! One time it will be okay and one time it will be a disaster. Going home with no booze, no jazz, and no talking in the lounge, it was pretty much a disaster. We worked on the postcard project instead, using postcards sent as gifts from the tip of South America among others.
The back side allowed my strange mind to work as the writing says: “Hey!” cried Thad the security guard, “Take your catboy love out of the produce section!”
Catboys: “But we love the smell of catnip and cilantro” (the joke is that cilantro is my catnip, I keep asking Linda to add it to everything: hamburgers, Mexican food…….cereal.)
Outside the construction has moved to the front, only 20 feet away and so louder than ever. It is a race between our sound bafflers on the room and the heat, since once we need to put in an air conditioner in the room, all the sound baffles will be useless and sleep will be hard to come by. Today, while taking pictures for the blog (from the art I have), we caught one of the workers doing laundry. He was spreading his work clothes on the cement and spraying them with a high power hose, then washing them and high power hosing them again.
Here he has just finished and his laundry is done and drying.
Tomorrow HAS to be a bed day for me.
The problem in bed days is my back (it generates heat but can’t escape, after an hour or so that means I pass out – so I have to use ice and fans to try to limit that). But for all the fantasies of the joy of being in bed, it isn’t: Physically or mentally.
“How can the world just carry on? How can everything carry on?” It is one thing to find out that I am not irreplaceable at work (not that they can do the work AS WELL, just that they can find 2 or 3 people to get some of it done), but quite another to find that I am redundant as a human being.
No one walking by thinks ‘who is up there’, even the workers who dictate my life and sleep probably don’t know what I look like or my name. In bed, without access to a computer I strive to gain back the reserves I need but…
My life I have spent trying to give 100%, and failing. I worked from the age of a tween, real paid work, and before that as a ‘trader’. I have always worked, and exercise, ready to ride or walk when needed. I went to university and had a full time job and an overload schedule. I scheduled every single minute and yet I KNEW I wasn’t giving 100%. Somewhere, between the breathing, the racing to school on my bike, making a new record and on weekends riding my bicycle to the top of mountains, or running them, it wasn’t enough.
Two years ago, I went on a picnic and came very close to dying (CTD in EMT speak: circling the drain). An EMT saw a gravestone and said, ‘That’s what we should put on your grave’ – it was a large single word carved in stone: REST.
Since then, as the daily activities have taken three times the amount of time as muscles and nerves die, then five, then ten times, I am always busy, always behind on things to do. Only now – free of the human feelings of burning and choking to tell me when I am deprived of oxygen, or the warnings for when I am working too long for my muscles as they lock up, or my spine locks. Nor do I get warning when my hands stop working as my spinal column is squeezed, or I pass out from working so hard, there just isn’t enough oxygen to keep me awake, but I don’t stop. I type with a finger, a bit of thumb, a nose, a tooth.
Now, I give 100%.
And it isn’t enough. And I don't know why.
The last while I have been more than pensive,
I have been suicidal. I am only stopped because I can’t move enough. I spent so much energy each day working to keep myself going and yet I am pulled toward taking active control of my life and death. To die because I am not smart enough to keep myself from a cold, or because basic functions have stopped isn’t really a decision, is it? I mean, if I am not hungry and I don’t eat, how is that suicide?
The truth is that I am terrified.
The unknown in front of me is not in any way sudden, but delayed, a fear I must climb painfully as it stretches before me. It is a test of my willpower. The day I did let my depression in, the day this week I gave in, I degenerated quickly, struggling to breath, passing out, weak.
So every day, every hour I do things that I used to think, “Put me out of my misery if I get like that.” Do I laugh now?
The secret that no one wants to know is that pain can be, not endured, but altered, there are tricks, like warping focus and grim will. Maybe it is because I did things that most people thought impossible while able bodied but I manipulate this body to the brink of death and beyond. Slap yourself hard to produce enough endorphins to counter the nerve pain, concentrate on the next letter in this post in order to not think about the pain in the spine, which flares so high I have to consciously disconnect the vomit reflex to stop the pain from making me vomit.
Imagine an arm on fire. Now imagine that the arm is on fire…..forever. Many people would rest, would curl up but I wondered, ‘can I move it?’ and I did, and it still hurt…..but I moved it. And if I moved it, maybe I can lean on it, maybe I can do something with it.
Yes, I have muscle pain, I have bone pain, I have fatigue (but the truth as some have found is to use the pain and the feeling of the knife at my throat to force me to move while with fatigue. No, it isn’t the worry and terror that if I don’t move the feeling of the knife will continue slit my throat it is rather the promise that I will. Peace.
I am not allowed around scissors or knives. Not since I took a letter opener to my face, from the forehead to my cheek, right over my eye (Yeah, those months of no pictures of me). Do you think I am not ashamed, not wishing that it was something else, and that in a few moments of bliss and post exercise high, I think, I say, “I can do this” before I am crushed into the ground, my bones shattered by the weight of it.
If only broken bones would slow me down. And so, like the trees above the video store, I try to find anything of joy, anything that reminds me living is important.
Why? Because there are real people, friends, out there whose care has carried me. Because I am just too stupid to quit. Because dying is easy and living is hard. Because life is green, and only while I hold out, can that remain.
The joke of it, right, someone who is terminal, and who doesn’t have an immune system (except the one attacking them) who cuts themselves in order to force themselves into eight or ten hours of non-stop work. I assessed I needed at least two bed days a week to get reserves to last the first part of summer. I figured that out over a month ago, and I haven’t had a bed day since there – too much to do, so much to do before it is too late. One thing I can thank my upbringing for, is to learn that almost anything can be endured. When I walked to school and passed by barbed wire in LA as a child, 8, 9, 10, I used to grab the wire with both hands, letting the barbs sink in, and found that it was survivable. Indeed, later I couldn’t understand why people put coats over barbed wire when going over fences….it is just flesh and pain. I was being prepared to be put in a concentration camp and be tortured to death. I used to practice at ripping my nails out. And no, I don’t have a high pain threshold, indeed, strong wind and even touch is painful to me. Linda said once that I might have the lowest pain threshold doctors have seen but the highest will and pain endurance.
But now, the things that happen to me daily, it scares me, it breaks me down, sobbing, and then I keep working. I once told Linda that God and I have an arrangement, that as long as I am in pain, God lets me live. I told her that over 10 years ago. Now, I wonder if I am sort of celestial experiment of what can be endured.
I KNOW that others endure these things too, but after a while, they just stop speaking about it. Though I now realize what at least two of my friends deaths were. And I think I know the death of another, that he just stopped fighting that daily fight, nothing deliberate, just worn out. So to take a bobsled down the major hill of town after taking a drink of barbiturates sounds like a pretty good thing. Or to sit somewhere with someone I love seeing what is good and beautiful as the last thing I know,
it is so tempting. To have that something in my control at last.
I am getting a mouth guard, not because of the seizures, but the pain hitting, holding back the pain and keeping on, or just being conscious, so I can keep on, requires a gritting of teeth that chips them, creates cracks in my teeth. Sometimes I think that I am the fourth seal, the pale rider whose name is death, and hell follows me. Everyone assumes that means it goes out to others, but I don’t know, maybe it just describes a person who manages to live with hell, and stay sane. I think some others who have been there know that kind of pain logic.
I am sorry for the bible language, much like The Prisoner in Kafka, this was written into my skin with a pen of steel, over and over.
I asked for hope, for something to keep me going. And now I am going to create it, a picnic in two weeks, I think, a dinner out in three. Let’s all do it together and by the rule of three, one of the actives should be great, right?
We.....I progress into the darkness without caution, without restraint.
They say that courage is to know fear and act anyway. The courage of men and women to act, woken from the nightmares that have haunted them for years is something we don’t talk about. I applaud them, and the daily fights they make to work, to leave the house, to be there. I can’t promise you that a life turning to face that fire, the one which you fear the most of all, is one which will be recognized by others. But it is the reason I grabbed barbed wire at 8 years old. If I was going to be put in a camp, I wanted to face that fear.
I pray, like Samson, blinded, tortured, beyond things like pride and meaning, for the power to lift the world. Samson wanted sheer destruction, while I want to somehow grab hold of the invisible lines of fear, of insecurity, of pain, of despair, of desperation – grab hold of the whole world’s line and lift them, so that millions, tens of millions of people will know what it is like to overcome the fear and will rise up, and things will change. 
That's it, the hope things will change so that I will not die in a world that is more cruel, less caring, than one I was born into.
Hard to imagine that I am bound by frustration and despair.
Any day you start with brushing your teeth and end up as the front page of a sex porn mag is an interesting day (oh joy, another reason for my parents to be proud of me!). Aaron Williamson from 15mm Films contacted me about using a picture of me with a squirrel to advertise a new film. I said ‘no problem’ as any picture can be reproduced of mine or me, this is anarchy incorporated around here. Of course, I thought it was going to be the one of the squirrels head buried into my crotch. But they wanted this one.
Well with that kind of motivation and due to the result of the medication for my thyroid actually allowing me to sit upright again. I will be attempting to blog daily except on weekends and anything I declare a holiday (like ‘Beth Sleeping Holiday’). Yes, that’s right, daily. And try to reply to every comment as I have been with the last few posts. Please feel free to lavish me with manga. No, that’s not ‘in exchange’ or anything as the writing here is free, I just really, really like manga. And as much as they send me emails I don’t think I have won the: Irish Lottery, Brazil Lottery, BBC Lottery, and the sole selected money holder for Princess Amuta for 1.4 million. So instead I’m feeling like writing. Let’s roll…
On Sunday, I did the two hour get up thing, with showering and getting ready thing to go (I have so many of 1 earring, where did the others go?). Then Linda, Cheryl, Indy (the power wheelchair) and I went to see and talk to artists at the Moss Street Paint In. This is where the entire Moss Street (so called because it is a freaking mountain side) in closed off to artists for several hours.
(Why yes, that is a genuine bamboo umbrella which Geisha’s use in dancing which is shading me. And yes, only available in Kyoto from a store that only sells to Geisha and Meiko’s, no phone, no internet order, and doing that for 140 years. The owner was not keen to sell to me; but I crip carded her into it!).
At the top of Moss street I saw Richard Hunt, the famous carver and uncle of Jason Hunt. I was going to say I 'ran into' but with INDY, my wheelchair, that is more like, 'ran over' so I have to change the phrase. Richard is a very famous artist (he did the Queen's Baton) whose grandfather was one of a few handful of original carvers left on the west coast.
Those four or five carvers were employed by the Royal Museum to make replicas of the art the museum held, so that the masks and carvings could be preserved. But they also went around to all the different villages to teach the youth carving again. Because the Potlatch, an important ceremony with many different dancers (and masks to go with them) was banned as 'heathen' by Christians, the west coast culture was almost lost. Richard's Grandfather promised there would always be 'a Hunt' (himself or one of his family) at the museum, and when he died that was Richard, his apprentice. The Grandfather could carve in Haida, Salish and all the west coast styles but Richard could now focus on the Kwagulth style. When talking to Jason Hunt later it turned out he did five years carving in the carving shed of the museum as well before they shut it down. Richard said that now that the carving was recognized as a genuine art form, he was no longer needed there and now has his own gallery or does commission work. He makes mostly bears and eagles. Lots of eagles, which is what he is carving here, after he saw on a program that it was the emblem of his village at Fort Rupert.
I asked why he did the bear, and did he do the bear dance? He said yes, and did the bear dance in his chair. It was a ‘transformation’ dance where you are a human (normal arm swing) then you turn and (his arms lumbered) you are the bear among the animals, you turn again and you are a human again. Jason explain that mean it was a dance where you wear a ‘transformation mask’ where there are two masks, one inside the other, and as you turn, the one inside is revealed (the bear) then hidden again. I asked Richard if Jason was here and said how I knew him and he said he didn’t know if he was here today but to say hi to Jason if I saw him.
That was not to be the only interesting exchange, like talking to a German painter because I guessed the inspiration of his clouds (the Michelangelo in the Vatican) in his painting about how he met and talked to Salvador Dali when they sold paintings in spain in the 70’s. But that is for tomorrow! For now we go down Moss Street, which is named because it seems they carved it right out of a friggin cliff, it is steep and gets steeper,
as you can see, I am reclined back in my chair but I look like I am upright.
Of course, being Victoria, with five different types of recumbent bicycles, two types of wheelchair or handcycles, and so much cycling, it was hard to tell if this was just transportation or art.
It was a restored (or original) bicycle that had been adapted with a two-cylinder engine. How did that work exactly? I don’t know but Cheryl was very interested.
We continued down and found a flat spot where a group of four, two drummers and two dancers were starting a performance.
A crowd quickly gathered making pictures difficult, but I bought this camera so I could take pictures around corners, so I kept at it. The drummers had given out shakers to kids and some of them were in sound making heaven.
The drummers playing teach drumming around Victoria and the one I talked to has over 100 drums and plays on everything from goat skin drums to a donkey’s jawbone. They are holding a free class in August which I might attend. They said that having neuropathy is no problem and there are lap drums. Odd, since when I was at orchestra camp (and without neuropathy), I was enlisted as drummer for one of Glass's’ compositions which required 30+ percussionists. It was found that not only could I NOT do the wrist roll needed for drumming but even after I was demoted to ‘clack sticks’ I did not have the needed skills: the ability to count to four. In my defence, I would clack and the page would read, “84 bar rest” so I am going, “1…2…3…53, 1…2…3….fifty..um was that fifty four or fifty three?” So by the time I am suppose to clack again, I am about two bars ahead or behind. That thing about even a broken clock getting it right twice a day does not apply to me and ‘clack sticks’. So we will see. Meanwhile, back on Moss Street, these two drummers are really beating it out in a hot sunny day, making the rhythms.
And the rhythms were making people sway, people tap their feet, making some people dance, and some children dance with wild abandon with a smile that says, “And I REALLY don’t get in trouble for this??”
Well that is all for now except that I did run into Jason Hunt, who was showing his latest carving commission.
It is a table top which will later be covered with glass. I said the ‘hi’ from his uncle and he explained a phrase his uncle used, when I had asked if all his brothers were in carving (I should have asked about the sisters!), and he said yes ‘except for one who couldn’t stand the sight of his own blood’. Now in MY family, that would mean, in the way I was sent off as a three year old and a six year old being told, “Remember, you bear the family name” that the person had turned their back on the family tradition – meaning they hated their blood and blood ties. No, it turns out that he hated the sight of blood. In carving apparently getting a chisel in your hand or finger is just an occupational hazard, as is the blood, particularly when you start. This brother couldn’t stand the sight of blood and quit. So for any self-harmers, you might want to take up detailed carving.
Jason also said that Linda’s Birthday surprise is almost ready and that he has a disc of photo’s so I will be able to show the work in progress. The reason he didn’t send me any photos as he worked is that he wanted it all to be a surprise. Once I get the finished product and the disc I will blog about that. Thank you to everyone who contributed to her Birthday commission – it is definitely a gift from the ‘family’ of Screw Bronze and not just me.
As a teaser for tomorrow, here is the picture of an artist I met,
who has some VERY interesting art. This one called, “wheatfield” kept drawing me back (those shadowy figures, so 80's horror, I am not sure I would want it over my bed at night), enough that I asked how much it was. It had sold...just that afternoon. Linda behind me sighed in relief. Apparently I am only allowed ONE large buying of art I can’t really afford each year.
We returned home where after a nap, we did postcard until 5:00 am. Here are the postcards at stage 2,
I am still working on doing the stickers on all of them and then the writing. But these are four of the 38 we did in those 24 hours. I keep putting pictures of postcards up because I just think they are beautiful, each one.
Moss Street Part II tomorrow!
It was early morn, and two Camera Whores (Linda and I) were on the prowl.
The day was one of perfect sun and the question wasn’t IF we would be taking pictures but WHERE. As it happened Linda forgot her camera (two point deduction), AND she got distracted by the donuts!
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention the fresh donuts where the dough had been freshly kneaded before covered with cinnamon?
Yeah they were pretty rockin.
So yes, we got up and out early and at the bright DAWN of 11:00 am we dragged ourselves to the farmers market 
which is also a craft market at Moss street. One of the places we went to see what can be seen, and while Cheryl got cheese curds, Linda and I picked up some fresh Cilantro and Chives (with blooms still atop) for our mexican chicken and veg for that nights dinner. Here is a fraction of the market with Linda holding her jade plant. 
She has been given a new desk at work, so here she is holding the start of her usual urban jungle desk, which will begin with a humble jade plant.
Due to my unique view (I call it the seven year old seeing the gum under the table view) from the wheelchair, it gives me a chance to both take pictures from interesting perspectives (click on any pictures to make them full screen).
I can get down low and take the close in shots without straining, like these blue glaze mugs 
from a potter who had not only cool hand made skull mugs but a wonderful skull topped Urn we thought would work well for…um….ME (with a name like Goat Dragon Studio, you know they must carry Hello Kitty too!). So we have his card for when times comes.
Instead of covering all the people I talked to at the market I am going to just give a taster for today, three artists: a native sculpture/painter, a spinner and skein wool maker (for those ADDICTS: the knitters!), and a soap creator/sculptor. I also picked up on the gossip: who had retired, who was a famous Japanese potter and ignored here, and talked to a seller from India who had the greatest ivory card case
from Shanghai and gave me tips on sending postcards to India. And of course, checking out the local artist: painters, wood carvers, gourd carvers, and cloth makers. This picture is $150 
and both Cheryl and I like it, very much the feel of the sea and the Island. But onward…
The woman spinning unfelted wool on a hand spindle
is Claudia Lorenz of Island Spindle Co. before she continues on that Ashford spinning wheel from the 80’s you can see behind her (contact me to get her email!). She advertises handspun yarns and spinning wheel repairs but who needs to advertise when you have a basket of skeins that looks like this (click on pic!).
This picture has the skein with the longest name of all, it is the one with the white mixed in upper left and is called: “Core Spun Silk Blend Plied with Unspun Corriedale Roving.” I hope the knitters and spinning people know what that means.
She not only makes long skeins,
like you can see here in yum-yum colours decorating her booth but she has a delicious selection of wool and silk mixed skeins which made several women passing by salivate. 
I tried to get a picture that did the skeins justice through the plastic bags.
From there I met Laura-Victoria Soaps, Laura advertises soaps (click on picture!) 
(yes, that is right, there isn't any fruit or veg, those are ALL soaps!) with no dyes, perfumes, coconut or palm oils AND she hand crafts each one, having everything from Cauliflower (back right) to Rhubarb. She sells her mushrooms at $3 each (about 2 pounds or $3-4 australian dollars). Did I mention she HAND carves each one - (uh huh Abi, EACH ONE! Every single mushroom!). The Mushrooms are a mixture of coca butter base, oatmeal, blackberry with a hand rub of light cocoa power to give the mushrooms the ‘just off the field look.’ The quail eggs which smell divine
and come in a little holder like you just took them from your little quail house, use cocoa butter and cinnamon with a darker cocoa rub. Meanwhile these little bags of baby potatoes 
(11 per sack – I want to put a bit of butter on them and eat them. DO NOT eat the soaps!) The potatoes are cocoa butter and oatmeal, blackberry and olive oil. She loves her craft and has over a dozen different fruits and veg at any time. It is always changing.
I finish with Jason Hunt who is from Fort Rupert near Alert Bay, works only on commission now at his Gallery here (Check on the 'Galleries' button on his site for some amazing art pictures: I love the 'Woodwork Archives' section).
His father and grandfather taught John sculpture and painting. His father and his grandfather were taught by his great grandfather; a lineage of West Coast Native Art. His Grandfather was the famous Native sculpture Henry Hunt and with his father they made two totem poles on commission. One of them went to parliament and the second was shipped to the UK and is now sitting outside Buckingham Palace in London (take a look). So, he just comes to Moss Street Market to meet people and to show off some of his prints.
He is a traditional artist and knew some of the types of carvers who made the rings Linda and I have (he had an AWESOME ring of gold, with carved white gold overlay on 80% of it!). He has a great sense of humor and specializes in traditional masks but does other traditional carving and is JUST the type of person I would want to have me make me some art (as if I could afford that!). But it was great to talk to someone who does this for a living, and is HAVING FUN doing it.
By this time I was out of oxygen, my hands were funny colours and with the sun high above I beat a hasty retreat. But I vow that this Camera whore will appear where pictures are to found! I hope you had a great long weekend (US and UK readers). And if you come to Victoria, I’ll take you around, for some reason, they seem to remember me…
We have just tonight finished sending off a few packages and 40 postcards, which worked us until 7:30 am, a nap and then back at it – all night working on postcards: The postcard project rolls on. We appreciate all donations, but right now, we haven’t had any postage stamps donated in 2009, or .94 cent stamps since…um...ever. It is $18.80 for 20 postage stamps and since this time we posted to New Zealand, Australia, South America, India, Two countries in Asia, the UK, and the EU (all of which require .94 stamps) – five continents (we do Africa next week!) in one week, and .94 cent stamps are required for all non-US bound post cards (I post the Canadian ones here). If you want to get some (talk about unsubtle, eh?) they are available for purchase through the post office from the wish list. It is just, we could have sent more postcards this weekend, but we ran out of postage stamps. OR, if you live in the US and have like 2 or 3 or 5 of the .94 lying around can you post them to me, pretty please? I and people literally all over the world will be grateful. I hope to do a blog post over at the Postcard Project Blog today or tomorrow to give some pictures and some updates as a lot of really cool postcards went out. Also check out Linda's post on Spring and daffodils at Girl's Gotta Fly.
Meanwhile with the Japan Cat Network, David is going slightly insane with work as he is teaching 50% more AND building a new shelter for his 75 cats, plus he opened up a satellite station in Tokyo for adoption. So maybe that will be 100 cats soon? Yikes. There are some friends going over and David said I can put up their address, so if you want to send them any medicine (Revolution!), cat toys, or other items that could be used, please do (here is the Japan Cat Network Help Page). We are going to try to find some online toys and such to have sent to them to take to David.
Addendeum: Due to a family emergency they are going to a different city before leaving. David apologizes for the loss in postage and asks if you want to still send things (I do, it's kinda cool!) you can send them directly to him.
David Wybenga
173 Inae-cho
Hikone-shi
Shiga-ken
521-1125
JAPAN
Well, that was this weekend, as weather was terrible and we stayed indoors. But last weekend was ‘Tourist in your own home Town’ and I very much wanted to take Cheryl to the Royal British Columbia Museum. 
When we left to go to the UK, it was listed as one of the top 10 Museums of North America, I don’t know if it still is, but I was dropped off here every time my grandparents came into town and not only is it cool, it is kind of like home to me! Only this time I will see it in a wheelchair and on oxygen.
The Museum’s unique nature, of which I can only show you four examples in this blog post, is to create the entire experience of the history of BC in a walk through setting. So that you don’t see it, you ARE it. For example, upstairs (not wheelchair accessible, still waiting on that disability act, but don’t worry after 20+ years in committee, I am SURE it is almost ready!) there is a full fishery, the gutting table, the fish heads, the canned salmon, the nets, the whole thing. Here we are at the Coastal Biosphere. 
As you see, they show both the sea lion and the cubs and seals as well as the terns and other birds which are on the cliffs. British Columbia, having both the jet stream and two islands HUNDREDS of miles out to sea, one of which is over 150 miles long (Queen Charlotte Island, where the Haida tribe is from), have cliffs which house some of the rarest birds in the world. Other areas include an undersea submarine, and an entire walk through forest – in these areas they also include smell machines so you smell salt and kelp and the sea in the Coastal Biosphere.
My favorite, both as an adult and as a kid, has been Old Town. You enter through Century Hall (to go back to 1900),
and see the exhibits for each decade, including the “I had that!” moments. Then into the town of Victoria at NIGHT, during 1899-1910 with cobblestone streets, the sounds and smells piped in for full realism. At the Blacksmiths, we found not only one of those new contraptions, an automobile, but MY automobile (it has my name on it! That is the plaque in the front).
We asked a nice guy going by to take our picture in front of the printer’s office (with a full press and plates inside).
Gold is what put Victoria and Vancouver on the map, and there were MANY Gold rushes, including a small one just outside of town (remember when we visited GOLDsteam park, and kissed in front of the tree – yes, a small gold rush on the island too!). But mostly Victoria was a stopping ground, and a rough town because….we were low and sleazy, and a free port. If you went to the Colony of British Columbia where Vancouver is, you would have to pay TAX on everything in your ship. However, if you stopped at the British Colony of Vancouver Island which had no tax, you could continue on to Vancouver having your passport and papers stamped. Yes, we started off as a low down sneaky city and we still are!
Because it was night, the town was to be lit with the gas lights but also the area was as dusky as Victoria would BE during that period. One of my favorite attractions was the full old cinema with old fashion velvet seats showing different full length movies, mostly Charlie Chaplin.
That’s right, you go in there and there is a movie playing with piano accompaniment and titles on the screen, much like the restored cinema in Port Townsend, but ours is FREE but plays only old movies. I liked it then, I like it now!
This is one of the main streets, with the Saloon, the Grand Hotel and a parlor.
Behind me is China town including the sounds and an alley to escape a gambling house (one of the alleys still exists in our Chinatown, the oldest in Canada). To the left was the train station in which you can sit and wait and listen to the approach of a train, or hear and see on the blinds the lights of trains going through (fun as a kid!). Linda and Cheryl went up into the hotel, where you can see how the life of a lady of means lived, as well as how a lady with little means lived. I was left at the bottom of the stairs below the OF COURSE, picture of Queen Victoria
(we still get the day off for Queen Victoria Day! A National Holiday! In the UK, I asked when they got it off and they said, “But she’s dead! And we don’t get off for the living Royals, why should we take a day off for her?”).
Here is a traditional middle class to aspiring upper middle class family parlour.
And even though my grandparents were in the middle of the woods, THEY had one too. We went in on Sundays (it was freezing), and there was an organ, and the best china, the velvet couch, the fireplace and the nice paintings on the wall. I think the family bible was in there too. My Grandfather came over here at 4, and all he knew is what his parents thought was important, and his parents were Edwardian, so he built himself an Edwardian house where he could have tea at 11:00 and 3:30. I included the picture of the organ for Abi, as it is a home pipe organ with petals to provide air and stops as well. There is also a long clock (later known as a grandfather clock) which my grandparents had along with those ‘make you sit up straight’ oh so uncomfortable chairs they had imported from ‘the old country.’ So this is like looking at my old Grandparents place.
I included this picture from the sod house and farming section (my grandmother who I talked to recently remembered growing up in a sod house – which is a house made of….um, pieces of dirt). But this is an old, um farm machine, maybe a thresher or a harvester or something. 
But now Linda and Cheryl can send it back to their parents or grandparents and then get the whole family arguing about what it is, and how, “No, no, When I was with Charlie, working that summer on Morgan’s fields in the summer of ’52 we used one of these and it is definitely a. ……”
There is also a walk through life size replica of the Discovery (Captain Cook’s Ship), not wheelchair accessible and some wharves, so I amused myself as being a wharf slut 
. I tried to pick up sailors on leave, drug them, then take their money and sell them to the navy – a good old shanghai! Hey, this girl gets bored easily, besides that is good money making!
They also had down on the dock, a Sea Chest, which is something every Sailor had to make to stow gear. 
I show you this because you can see that it used joinery to stay together (not the greatest joinery, but okay). My Grandfather was in the Canadian Royal Navy and he gave me his Sea Chest, which he had used nails on (not good at joinery). I am pointing this out because if you had a relative in the Navy, there was something like this in the attic. Also, to a certain person taking a joinery class, I took a nice CLOSE up picture because....I want one! So consider that a commission, or a challenge!
Victoria not only had many steam ships, paddle boats (for the many lakes and coast) but also cruise line, the Empress Line (ergo, we have the Empress Hotel), where people could visit the other colonies of the empire or immigrate on the Empress of India, Empress of Australia, etc (one of those ships is still in use as a cruise ship in South America: still has the old dance hall and a two level movie theatre). This section uses the type or perhaps original carpet from the Cruise days. With Linda and Cheryl ready to embark.
There was also the Empress of Japan, which is how I think the Emperor’s daughter made her way to Victoria, and how we ended up with cherry blossom trees. Here is a glimpse at the glory days…if you had the money.
Which is why I was so glad to stay last year in Hotel Kanaya, where Ghandi and Helen Keller stayed amoung other notable people. Because it was the same, a connection to that lost world (the train station, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, has a DANCE hall on the second floor – are people to dance the waltz until their train?).
Leaving the old Imperial Empire, the Museum hosts an floor of impressive collections of Native art including the extremely rare Haida art. 
The Haida were the geniuses of the west coast and though hundreds of miles to the north and far out at sea, would come down annually to raid down here, against the Salish and other tribes for slaves (oddly left out of most 'traditional heritage enactments'). When some British merchant traders arrived at the Queen Charlotte Islands expecting the native population to be awed at the ‘shiny beads’ – the Haida just saw them as sort of “slave take out – delivered!” And took the white traders slaves, and then made them teach them how to use cannons (which they found on the ship). When the Royal Navy showed up to rescue the traders, the Haida had made a trap and took them hostage too. In the end, the King had to ransom his subjects back. NOT AMUSED.
Up on Queen Charlotte, there are several Haida Villages on the south island which are as they were left, some 80 years ago. They are a world heritage site, full of long houses and totem poles. And even though I taught there and Linda and I later visited, you have to hire a boat and have about 5 days if you want to try and see it. It is very remote. However, another village, which was about to fall to pieces (and had in many areas), was taken and restored, inside the museum, including the long house.
The art which is unique to the Haida besides working only in Black and Red is the Argillite stone carvings. The stone is only available on one mountain in the WORLD, out on Queen Charlotte, so the carvers are very strict about learning the trade and how it is done. 
Indeed, the art of the argillite is a story of resistance. As in the 1920’s things like flowers and European influences started to show up. The old carvers got together and no one knows exactly what was said but the carving went back to traditional motifs ONLY, and stayed that way for the next 70-80 years. This is only one of several walls of display but most of these pieces are in the thousands of dollars (these ones, being over 100 years old are tens of thousands). We happen to have one because while living in the UK, a charity shop was selling one as an oversized ash tray (they couldn’t figure out what it was?), for 3 pounds. That included the inlay of ivory. Oh well, not a lot of Argillite comes through charity shops.
Let's end with a look at Linda and Cheryl in front of the Long House.
It is nice to see the native art in the lighting that not only preserves it but also makes you feel this is what it might have looked like at night.
I wish I had time to tell you more, but that will have to suffice for our first glimpse at the museum. So, if you do go to Victoria, please go to the Museum. If you have a Recreation and Integration Pass (sent in the post free if you ask for it and are disabled), your companion gets in free. I will come back with part II of the Museum and the rest of ‘Tourist in your Home Town’ in a few days.
since pocky seems to go with bed days like, um, strong, red haired women taking a slo-mo shower go with an increased breath rate (Go Scully!).
They remind me of the bamboo forest just outside Kyoto where the artists, poets and other outcasts from the royal court made an artists colony in their exile.
or caused any problems.” (Linda was above me restraining from strangling me).
I was freezing! Once I got inside, then it was only an elevator ride up another three steps until the hallway to the Bengal lounge. The Conference Center which had this ‘maze for wheelchairs’ has posted next to the elevator for three steps the ‘Special Award for Excellence and Innovation of Design”. I have noticed that the further a wheelchair has to wheel, the more the designers applaud themselves. If 10 stairs can be turned into a 14 switchback series of ramps which take a quarter mile of wheeling – that is SURE to get an award.
They were playing Jazz with piano and a double bass in the corner. Sadly, after talking with the native art experts for 30 minutes, I had a little TIA and passed out. Here I am after being propped up, you can see how the side closest to Cheryl is dead and the other side of the face is compensating.
I have visited this store; it used to be at the end and have the largest collection of Inuit art outside the Canadian Government. Now they do all West Coast groups, and Linda and Cheryl found a mask by Hunt. It is sort of odd to have a sculpture on the wall by the same person in an exclusive Gallery. What we did find is that Mongo Hunt, the father of Richard Hunt and grandfather of Jason Hunt not just opened the carving shed at the BC Royal Museum, he built the long house inside (it is in the pictures of when I went to the museum – lowly lit to represent firelight with piped in sounds of light drumming and dancing). I loved hanging in that long house as a child, left at the museum while my grandparents got food for the trip back to the woods. I never thought that one man could have made it, and the totem poles inside, much less that I would met and talk to his son and have a commissioned piece by his grandson.
I know it is Jade because I have a few hunks sitting around, not quite as large as this from when I went with a couple 4 wheel drives, a chainsaw and a winch to a Jade mine where the Jade was helicoptered out. The price had dropped so Jade just sat in blocks on the ground. This underground fantasy with mermaid is far beyond anything I could have imagined looking at those unfinished blocks. I guess that diversity of vision is why I like human brains.
The back side allowed my strange mind to work as the writing says: “Hey!” cried Thad the security guard, “Take your catboy love out of the produce section!”
Catboys: “But we love the smell of catnip and cilantro” (the joke is that cilantro is my catnip, I keep asking Linda to add it to everything: hamburgers, Mexican food…….cereal.)
Here he has just finished and his laundry is done and drying.
The problem in bed days is my back (it generates heat but can’t escape, after an hour or so that means I pass out – so I have to use ice and fans to try to limit that). But for all the fantasies of the joy of being in bed, it isn’t: Physically or mentally.
I have been suicidal. I am only stopped because I can’t move enough. I spent so much energy each day working to keep myself going and yet I am pulled toward taking active control of my life and death. To die because I am not smart enough to keep myself from a cold, or because basic functions have stopped isn’t really a decision, is it? I mean, if I am not hungry and I don’t eat, how is that suicide?
The unknown in front of me is not in any way sudden, but delayed, a fear I must climb painfully as it stretches before me. It is a test of my willpower. The day I did let my depression in, the day this week I gave in, I degenerated quickly, struggling to breath, passing out, weak.
I am not allowed around scissors or knives. Not since I took a letter opener to my face, from the forehead to my cheek, right over my eye (Yeah, those months of no pictures of me). Do you think I am not ashamed, not wishing that it was something else, and that in a few moments of bliss and post exercise high, I think, I say, “I can do this” before I am crushed into the ground, my bones shattered by the weight of it.
The joke of it, right, someone who is terminal, and who doesn’t have an immune system (except the one attacking them) who cuts themselves in order to force themselves into eight or ten hours of non-stop work. I assessed I needed at least two bed days a week to get reserves to last the first part of summer. I figured that out over a month ago, and I haven’t had a bed day since there – too much to do, so much to do before it is too late. One thing I can thank my upbringing for, is to learn that almost anything can be endured. When I walked to school and passed by barbed wire in LA as a child, 8, 9, 10, I used to grab the wire with both hands, letting the barbs sink in, and found that it was survivable. Indeed, later I couldn’t understand why people put coats over barbed wire when going over fences….it is just flesh and pain. I was being prepared to be put in a concentration camp and be tortured to death. I used to practice at ripping my nails out. And no, I don’t have a high pain threshold, indeed, strong wind and even touch is painful to me. Linda said once that I might have the lowest pain threshold doctors have seen but the highest will and pain endurance.
it is so tempting. To have that something in my control at last.
They say that courage is to know fear and act anyway. The courage of men and women to act, woken from the nightmares that have haunted them for years is something we don’t talk about. I applaud them, and the daily fights they make to work, to leave the house, to be there. I can’t promise you that a life turning to face that fire, the one which you fear the most of all, is one which will be recognized by others. But it is the reason I grabbed barbed wire at 8 years old. If I was going to be put in a camp, I wanted to face that fear.
That's it, the hope things will change so that I will not die in a world that is more cruel, less caring, than one I was born into.
