And to all a good night.

"Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;"

from A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore

The New Recute

 It started innocently enough. I had one nutcracker that looked like Santa. Then I saw others and well the die was cast. As of Wednesday that number has grown to 22. I am sure the collection really expanded once we began buying ornaments for our tree from Pier One Imports. They tended to put their Christmas merchandise on sale before Christmas and the temptation was too much. While I purchased a few elsewhere most of them came from Pier One as well as many of the nicest ornaments on our tree. 

“Marley was dead, to begin with ... This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” 

Pier One was a store we enjoyed, it was close and did not require a trip to a big shopping mall. We bought everything from bedroom furniture to candles but is was an especially important part of our life at Christmas. We could also get lovely Unicef cards there. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” 

When they closed earlier this year we dropped by and picked up a few candles. But we also realized it was one less place we would go simply to browse. Online shopping is convenient but rarely a shared experience. The last time I purchased a nutcracker at Pier One I was retired and had been to lunch with a group of friends from work. I was walking by with Manuela a lovely lady who had been telling us about a vacation home she was building in Mexico. The two of us wandered in and well the nutcrackers were on sale.  I realized when Pier One closed this was one yearly ritual that was no more and I decided the collection was complete. But recently we were watching a program on the Nutcracker and I knew there was one character missing. Yes I bought it online and yes I am now content with the collection as it is. 

“It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.” 

            

 

“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused” 

Why a pickle? As a student, 40 plus years ago I spent several summers working at the H.J. Heinz Co. in Leamington, Ont. It has been an ongoing joke in the family ever since. This was long before the capitalists bought the plant to grab the brand, degrade the product, and break the union. May they wear the chains they forged in life, mankind was their business. Not as charity after the fact, when they have no further use for wealth, but as an ongoing part of a life richly lived.

This photo is from our Dec 7th. Trip to see the wolf dogs. We have had mostly reasonable temperatures and little snow for Dec. I also have more shots of the wolf dogs who will be receiving a memorable Christmas treat through a Calgary restaurant's generosity.

https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/meat-scraps-donated-from-high-end-calgary-restaurant-to-canada-s-only-wolfdog-sanctuary-1.5229598

“Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man.” 

from The Outermost House - Henry Beston

The Christmas Maximalists Yule Tide

 

"Oddly enough, they often grow ten times the size of everyone else," said Alec thoughtfully, "and I've heard that they walk among the stars." 

The Phantom Tollbooth, Juster

Helen placed me on Instagram a month or so ago. It was fun to choose the topics I would follow, macro photography especially insects and nature seemed obvious, travel - nordic countries, London, Venice, New York and Japan, the Barbican and brutalist architecture (lots from the USSR) and mudlarking. We have started watching mudlarking on youtube as well. it has been relaxing and I look forward to seeing the photos even if it is a time sink. 

Instagram allows me to see the photos of people who share my interests.  In this turbulent time, I like to see the beauty that other people have discovered, the things they choose to seek out, surround themselves with. The things they treasure.  I avoid text-heavy posts with a few exceptions preferring to experience these things visually. It's seeing the world through someone else's eyes. One of the most important things for me when I travel is having someone to share the experience with. Sharing experiences not only enhances the experience at the time but creates a long term bond. You can see the same bond when family members share memories and relive experiences. 

Helen has also found a series of videos of walks that people film with GO-Pros.  There is no narration; people just film what they see as they walk. We have been able to see lots of gardens in Japan as well as the Christmas decorations in London and Red Square. It seems this is the closest we will get to travel at present, and I enjoy the unscripted nature of the videos. 

guytrott60

A Christmas Carol

 

 It seems we will be home and increasingly less mobile with our options limited due to the virus and the accompanying lockdown. The predicted colder temperatures will reduce our outdoor activities and we don't have any desire to spend more time than necessary shopping. So I have decorated flat out and I decided to share some Christmas spirit here and on my Instagram account. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary

Today we visited Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary. We just took the general tour and dropped off some food and treats we purchased for our dogs. Nina has had some health problems so we removed chicken from her diet as a precaution. It was lovely and warm and the wofdogs are beautiful. It is interesting to see the variation between certain animals. They also have a new gift shop which is quite nice. Recently they rescued some additional wolfdogs and are currently conducting a campaign  for funds to build additional enclosures. 

It was certainly nice to be outside safely.

For more on the campaign see:

From Alone to Home: Wolfdog Rescue Campaign

https://yamnuskawolfdogsanctuary.com

                                “Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,”

Tintern Abbey 

William Wordsworth

With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

 

Helen and I were walking the dogs thru the neighbourhood looking at the decorations. I had put up some outside lights and the interior was bursting with the tree, Nutcrackers and various Santas. I did say that what I really wanted to add was one of the older style plastic Santa or Snowman figures. Friday we went on the 2nd or 3rd non-grocery/hardware shopping trip since this all started. We went to Inglewood, a neighbourhood known for it's small shops. We had ordered several of the items ahead of time and everyone was very careful. I assume the grinches were at the malls or the various demonstrations. We visited several shops and picked up delicious burgers on the way home, also ordered online. But the highlight of the day was finding this fellow in Murphy's Mid Century a store we have frequented for years. I saw him thru the window before the store opened and we passed by again we were waved in and you can imagine what I looked at first. Coincidence can be a funny thing but it worked for me yesterday and I am delighted with our Christmas display, a little light for a gloomy time.

"Cards in each mailbox, 

angel, manger, star and lamb, 

as the rural carrier, 

driving the snowy roads, 

hears from her bundles 

the plaintive bleating of sheep, 

the shuffle of sandals, 

the clopping of camels. "

from Christmas Mail

by Ted Kooser

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55886/christmas-mail

Whateley and Nina taking their Christmas Letter to Santa

 

We will not be travelling for Christmas but we will be together, healthy and happy for the holidays.

“He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Charles Darwin: Notebooks worth millions lost for 20 years

 

 As a Darwin enthusiast and retired librarian I was somewhat appalled when Helen told me the notebooks had been lost/stolen.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55044129

“We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, 

nay whole systems of universe, to be governed

by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be 

created at once by special act"

Charles Darwin, Notebooks

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

The Origin of the Species

Florence 2019

“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. 

Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”

The October Country, Ray Bradbury

Fall drive to Drum

 

"Even the west, beyond the tinged rooftops

smells of cobalt"

from Natural/Unnatural 

by Margaret Avison

Florence 2019

"We shall meet again before long to march to new triumphs. "
Giuseppe Garibaldi

Anyone who has followed this blog will know how 

much we enjoyed visiting Italy. We cannot help 

 worrying about all the lovely people we met on our trips.

Italy passes 1m cases

The total number of coronavirus cases registered in Italy since the start of the pandemic surpassed the one million mark on Wednesday, the health ministry said.

About 32,961 new infections were recorded in the past 24 hours, down from the 35,098 cases reported on Tuesday.

The ministry also reported 623 Covid-related deaths, up from 580 the day before and the highest figure since April 6.

A total of 42,953 people have now died because of coronavirus in Italy since the disease came to light in February.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/nov/11/coronavirus-live-news-governments-scramble-to-secure-vaccine-doses-as-us-infections-top-100000-for-seventh-day-in-a-row?page=with:block-5fac0f598f08cd9e0b7f7426#block-5fac0f598f08cd9e0b7f7426

Venetian Lagoon 2016

 "Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;"

from September 1, 1939
W.H. Auden

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/31/wh-auden-september-1-1939-poem

Nov. 2nd 2020, Today

“But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in 

their own time, wondering what happened and 

why the world blew up around them.”

from Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

Waiting

“So," said Moundshroud. "If we fly fast, maybe we can catch Pipkin. Grab his sweet Halloween corn-candy soul. Bring him back, pop him in bed, toast him warm, save his breath. What say, lads? Search and seek for lost Pipkin, and solve Halloween, all in one fell dark blow?"
They thought of All Hallows' Night and the billion ghosts awandering the lonely lanes in cold winds and strange smokes.

They thought of Pipkin, no more than a thimbleful of boy and sheer summer delight, torn out like a tooth and carried off on a black tide of web and horn and black soot.

And, almost as one, they murmured: "Yes.”

from The Halloween Tree
by Ray Bradbury

Smoky Sept trip to the mountains.

 

"An amphitheatre that held
Valleys and cliffs and waterfalls,
Gorges hewn like royal halls,
forests flanked by hills at swelled
To mountains, these again to clouds"

fron Titans

by E.J. Pratt

Calgary -12C/ 10F feels like -20C/-4F waiting for the furnace repair person (it might have finally stopped snowing)

 

"From the window. Yes and you know
In your heart what the chill winds blow."

from Watershed
by Margaret Avison

Very snowy day

  "burning on the snow
drag-footed across the fields
whiskey-faced men go

the blind lead the blind
and coarse oglers invade the
countries of the mind"

from Haiku on Brueghel
by Phyllis Gotlieb 

 While Calgary often gets snow in Sept and October, sometimes quite significant snowfalls, it normally lasts a day or so, then the autumnal weather returns. This year it has been cold and snowy for some days and today promises to be more of the same. 

Alberta, Canada, 2020

 

“This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,
And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.” 
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterburty Tales 

from Snow Towards Evening by Melville Crane

"From some invisible blossoming tree

Millions of petals, cool and white.

Drifted and blew,

Lifted and flew,

Fell with the falling night."

 

Fall deer - Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park Oct. 9th

"Instructed by heron,
drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach
you which way to listen."


from How to See Deer
by Philip Booth

https://defendabparks.ca/

Drumheller - Books - Reading

"He had long wanted some neutral time, in which he could let go of the fixations of a liner life story story and rediscover the infinite potential of simply being. "

from Shrike
by Quentin S. Crisp

Oct 14, Snow Day

 

    "Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 

     its white flag waving over everything,

      the landscape vanished,

      not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   

      and beyond these windows"

      from Snow Day

       by Billy Collins  

She, then, like snow in a dark night,
Fell secretly. And the world waked
With dazzling of the drowsy eye,

from Like Snow

by Robert Graves

Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park Oct 9th

“But when the sun drops closer to the earth, the cold of the earth runs to it from the water and causes all green things to dry up. And because the sun has dropped closer to the earth, the days are short, and it is winter.”

― Hildegard of Bingen, 

I am not sure the quote is scientifically accurate but it is a nice conceit. It is still fall here though. 

https://defendabparks.ca/

Trip to the mountains pika and it's food pile

"Who sees, the ultimate Recipient
of what happens, the One Who is aware
when, in the administrative wing
a clerk returns from noon-day, through
the ointment of mortality
for one strange hour, in all his lustreless life,
has touched his face."

from The Apex Animal
by Margaret Avison

https://defendabparks.ca