Hello friends. It seems to be getting busier as time goes by. Ah, less time at "Inns"
and more with friends. So, I thought the Hazells lived on Salt Spring Island, but that was a mis-apprehension. They live in a little town (at least the postal code has this name) called Duncan, about two-thirds the way down Vancouver Island from Nanaimo. So took my first ferry ride, which took about three hours to get on. I learned that I need to make reservations, which I did for the ferry I took two days loater to Anacortes.Becky was teaching a Level 5 in Victoria, so was staying down there for the weekend. So Mark and his son Stephen greeted me. Mark is a really good cook. He had some clam spaghetti available that was delicious. I discovered a connction with Stephen, who's the same age as my daughter Kate, 26, and is studying video game construction at Simon Frasier University in Vancouver. I mentioned to him that I had just finished "Twilight Watch" by that Russian psychiatrist I was telling you about
and he got excited because he'd downloaded the movie version and had it with good subtitles for the Russian. He didn't know that it was out in book form, so I gave him that copy. They have a beautiful zen-ish, definitely ratna garden that the deer love -- especially chrysanthemum flowers. Their house is full of paintings by Becky and drawings by Mark's mother, who is an excellent artist also.They have a humongous TV and I got hypnotized into watching Minority Report, which wasn't too bad actually.
Salt Spring Island
The next day, we went to Salt Spring Island, because of course how could I resist seeing a hippy dippy haven. It was pretty cool. We went to the Saturday Market where folks sell crafts and produce. Got some fresh pressed apple juice and some cheeses to share.
That evening Mark drove us down to the Victoria Shambhala Centre to get Becky, who was still teaching when we arrived. We went to a great Japanese restauarant with some of the participants. I ended up selling three of my cards to a young teacher named Chris, which was just enough to pay for dinner!
Sunday, Sydney to Anacortes and off to Natalie Pascale Boisseau's
The next day, I took my third ferry trip (2.5 hours) across the border, definitely the best way to cross a border, even if you end up cuing up in your car a lot. There so happened to be some kind of humongous motorcycle rally going on in Anacortes -- literally hundreds of motorcycles in packs of 10 to 15 roaming the roads, which made driving on I-5 a bit of a challenge. Made it to Natalie and Laura's with no problems, had a lovely walk up a huge hill with Natalie and her two beagles, Bella and Chi (?) to catch a gander at two murders of crows pecking away on top of a reservoir.
Natalie's house has lots of trees, greenery and so on, my favorite environment and a large backyard with patches of vegetables growing. Evidently last winter four (I think) trees blew down and a chainsaw wood sculptor came by and asked if he could carve a few bears in exchange for one of the bears. Laura liked them so much that she bought the other one. Laura, who is a fish biologist, was all excited
because she had been sailing in their boat that afternoon and spotted a "bait ball." She had spotted hundreds of birds screaming and flocking around a patch of water and went to investigate, paddling through a room-sized swarm of small silver fish (probably like sardines) and saw the birds in a feeding frenzy picking out the fish and "flying" through the water back up to the sky while small silver fish scales slowly sank all around. When she paddled back through, the "bait ball" was much smaller and she spotted the ring of harbour seals who had rounded up the fish -- the bait -- for the birds so they could snag some fresh fowl for lunch.Well today, I'm headed to my Cousin Elva's house in Roseburg in Oregon, but I may stop overnight on the way so I can avoid driving at night. She's at a meeting of the Wildlife Safari, where she and her husband Dale volunteer. She's been very patient with how long it's taking me to get there. They "watched" a giraffe on the weekend (I think that means something like giraffe sat) and have put off their annual trip to Yellowstone Park to watch the elk in mating season. Elva is an ornathologist, like her mother Frances Hamerstrom, and takes wonderful photos of wildlife as well as draws. I'm really looking forward to meeting her.
When my mother died, a year ago Winter Solstice, I inherited a whack of photos of Clarence Darrow who married my great aunt Ruby. I ended up contacting two Darrow exerts, Joe Lutrell, a law antiquarian, and Randall Tietjen, a lawyer and author, who is putting together a book of Darrow's letters. He told Elva about me and she wrote an email and gave me a call. It's wonderful to meet a blood relative. I don't have very many -- mainly my brother Frank.
Well, that's enough for now.
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