The Tao of Travel

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road by Paul Theroux
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Just picked this up in the library and it is a GoodReads book of 2011.  Very cool!  I shall keep you abreast of my opinion.


My assessment of very cool turned into a disappointment that this is a book of quotes and quick verses on travel writing.  Had I not taken it out of the library I believe I would have enjoyed it more.  This is a book that you can pick up, open to a random page, then read quotes and snippets until you are ready to do something else.  As this was a 'return in three weeks' book, it did not suite my current reading requirements.  Perhaps with a personal copy, or a time when I need short bits of inspiration, but not right now.  I might like this book more another day.


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Flickr

Yep, I joined Flickr.  The thought has been in my head for a few years now but I wanted to investigate the site for a while.  I am adding my name to the really good pictures I post there and will only be posting my favourites of the one's I take.

T. Bates on Flickr

So far, it turns out a know a few people on the site and have started making new photography friends.  Here is the first of what I hope becomes many:

Beauty Surrounds You

Christoph Fischer on Flickr

Oh the rush, joy, fun and high of photography!

Pacing the Cage with Bruce Cockburn

I have been listening to this song over and over again for about a week now.  Took the CD out from the library and discovered this 1995 song, Pacing the Cage.  Love it.




Best lyrics in the song:

I have proven who I am so many times

The magnetic strips worn thin

And each time I was someone else

And everyone was taken in

I never knew what you all wanted

So I gave you everything

All that I could pillage

All the spells that I could sing

It's as if the thing were written

In the constitution of the age

Sooner or later

You'll wind up pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you

You can't see what's round the bend

Sometimes the road leads to dark places

Sometimes the darkness is your friend

Lyrics are musical poetry.  Beautiful things.

Bruce Cockburn website

Winnipeg Weather 3

A dead flower in winter

It is now my second winter in Le Peg (2012) and it is much warmer and more enjoyable than 2011.  The Chinook's from the Rocky Mountains have somehow lasted all along the prairies and warned us over during past two weeks.  (That statement is probably completely meteorologically incorrect and perhaps improbable but it sounds good to me.)

Hoar frost all over

This one appears to be covered during a windy day.

Last week, the weather would dip down just under freezing overnight, then rise up just at or barely above freezing during the day.  This produced several days of gorgeous hoar frost on the trees. (The first time I heard that word, I though someone said whore frost.  I could not believe that frost would be named after disenfranchised women/women making money for them selves.  Turns out is was hoar.  Sounds similar, but not.)  Several days of this frost on the trees, bushes, plants and wooden structures must made the city a magnificent winter wonderland.  I thought it would not get better, but then the fog moved in and the beauty doubled.  So gorgeous!

Pavilion in Assiniboine Park

Under another tree, taking pictures of this tree.

Time to head out with my camera and see if I could capture a thing or two.  Assiniboine Park was my destination of choice and I was able to capture several beautiful pics.  I also sent a text to several friends in town encouraging them to head out and capture the delicious vision of a city.  My friend Darren went to the Legislature and captured some photos now on Flikr.  Several others went out but I have not seen their shots as of yet.

Crusty and lovely

Who love a weeping tree?  Me!

I walked around the park, drove around the park (it is very large), and clicked away at everything that took my breathe away.  While standing taking pictures of the Pavilion, I heard a rustling in the bushes.  Twas a small family of deer looking for food in the bushes behind me.  What luck!  I turned, slowly perched on the bench nearby and snuck a picture of this deer behind the branches.

There was mutually observing and gazing for a time, then they moved on to a trodden path, then on behind several buildings.  Before they got away, I slowly walked around the bushes, squatted and found the same deer unable to stop looking at me, as I was unable to stop looking at it.

Winnipeg Weather 2

Due to the copious amounts of snow that fell during the winter of 2011, the Spring was upon us here in the water drenched province of Manitoba.  With 56 rivers, over 1,000 lakes we were join to lose.  Lose what?  I did not know as this was my first Spring in Winnipeg, but that amount of snow and the continuous rain?  We were going to lose.

Canadians were smart back in the day, and most of our cities are built on waterways as this was the best way to transport goods, people, and the necessities of life as Canada was being stolen from the First Nations people (might as well be blunt).  This also precipitates flooding in many cities as the water is right there meandering through the centre of the city.  Too much water in any form will eventually turn to the liquid variety, collect at the lowest points in town, and forge onwards.  Flooding is a big problem in several cities, but in a province where water flows in from the West, South and North, it can be even more damaging.

This is why in the Red River Floodway was built around Winnipeg in 1969.  Essentially, it is a big ditch into which water from the Red River can be diverted that would normally flow through the city, but can be taken around the city if the Red River is too high.  It truly is a large ditch.  Ingenious really.  Until the flood waters of 2011 collected and could not find a place to go.    

In May 2011 it all hit with evacuations, planned dike breaches, farm and reserve land flooded, roads cut off, people losing their home, it was chaos for many all along the Hoop and Holler Bend.  I was unfamiliar with all this information until the news, media, World Wide Web and people talked about it for months.  Interestingly enough, because of the floodway, Winnipeg was not flooded.  It could have been disastrous for the city but in diverting all the water to the floodway, most of the city did not even notice there was a flood.

The park path over-run with water

Water very close to the underbelly of this pathway bridge

Will the truck survive the day?

Don't live on the first or second floor

Just outside the city however, the floodway was dangerously high and the government stepped in and planed a dike breach.  This decision flooded farm and reserve land halting the growing season for many farmers, leaving many First Nations people without homes and a community, and cottage dwellers were left with little information about available support to help their properties remain in tact.  7,000 sandbags, $8 million dollars in temporary housing, multiple rivers high enough to evacuate homes.  All outside the city.

Trees in the river

Another road was needed to get to this destination

I was safe.  My apartment was higher up in my building.  My car was parked far from the river.  A series of philosophical questions filled my mind.  What is more important, a city of cement and wood or farmland on which we grow our food?  Whose lives are more important and should be left undisturbed, rural people, First nations people, or urban people?  Who decides what is important, government, city officials, general populace?  How do I take a flood seriously when my home and car are not in immediate danger?  I am new here and don't necessarily feel that this is my community, so how do I contribute feeling like an outsider?  Still thinking about some of these questions.

Winnipeg Weather 1

Before I moved to Winnipeg I looked up some information about the city so that I could be more prepared, for what, I am not sure, but I figured more information was better than none.  One of the first pieces of information I learned was that for its size (about 634,000 people) it is the coldest city in the world.  Yep, you read that right.  In the WORLD.  I moved here anyway.  Let's just say that the 'training' I received in Edmonton back in 1991, as my first real Canadian winter, was long and hard, but last winter, of 2011, was absurd.  Six weeks of -25 to -45 degrees Celsius!  So crazy!  Not only that but my apartment overlooked a major intersection of two week used roads and a large parking lot.  Every week a large dump truck and tractor with bucket would appear to scoop up the snow and release it outside the city limits.  I could not believe winter actually existed like this.  So much snow.  So long cold.  So very crazy.

The dump truck leaving its load at the University of Manitoba

Piles and piles of snow

There was so much snow that the snow ploughs did not head down the major city arteries one at a time.  No.  They convoyed down the street three and four at a time, gunning anything down it their wake, including snow, ice, and winter debris (like slow people running out of the way).  Sadly, I did not have the courage to jump in front of this careening vehicles to take a picture so your imagination will have to do.  Needless to say, it was quite a sight, especially at night.  

I learned during this long winter that the sun is deceiving.  It was out almost every day for six weeks, blazing brightly, making the snow sparkle on the sidewalk, but there was no warmth.  Some cruel celestial being had turned off its heat and left its light as a taunting joke.  Several times I left my apartment, ready to enjoy the hot, yellow, burning sun, only to have my eye lashes freeze my eyes together as I attempted to stumble out of the way of the snow ploughs.  Thank goodness they have spinning lights that are stronger than emergency vehicles or I would have been thrust aside like a snow bank.  I had to trudge on.  

My bad holding up a Winnipeg size snow drift.

Around the first week of March, my parking neighbour who had learned that I had just moved from Calgary and missed Chinook winds, joked that Winnipeg was having a Chinook.  It was -15 degrees Celsius.  Sadly, it felt warm and delightful as with the windchill, it had been up to -50 for several nights in a row during February.  How did my ancestors ever survive without down filled jackets, central heating and on occasion a hot toddy?  I honour them and their will.  They must have survived based on pure will, cuddling or hiding in the innards of their dead farm animals.  Ok.  I went too far.  I survived and somehow many of them did, as I am here, still living in these crazy winters.  We must all be crazy.  

Off to buy garbage mittens as they are the warmest and fashion at -50?  Ha!  Only for fools.  Give me the bright yellow and the tight wrist bands.  At least I will match the sun.

Falling Backwards

Falling Backwards by Jann Arden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So far Jann is providing the reader with very detailed accounts of her childhood.  I am not sure she is going to make it into the singing career part of her life at this rate as I keep looking at the thickness of the book.  I shall keep you updated.


I have been a fan of Jann Arden's music since the release of her first CD in the early 1990's.  Her music has always helped me process life experiences, realize that life is complicated, and that we all hope to have relationships with people we can rely on.  After receiving this book for Christmas, I devoured it.  As stated above, most of the stories in her book range from childhood to the beginning of her music career and do not extend beyond.  While Jann is open about many funny, personal, serious, hard, interesting and joyful experiences, it appears she still retains private information about other aspects of her life.  It was a great read and would recommend it to fans and strangers alike.


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Jann's Website:  http://jannarden.com/