Warning

Enjoyed the sky along highway 20 on the way to Muenster the other day.

And yesterday here in the city.

Wind warning today, though.

Meanwhile, down here on the ground:

Just back from a Hillsdally (Hillsdaily, Hill's delay). After Paterson, I'm thinking of widening the sweep a little for the Hillsdale book, including notes on jamming a nickel into the window frames last night, the windows rattling; on Lucy's request for the lentil soup recipe; on finding my Banff Artist's Card in my back pocket this morning.

Fathers

Last night I hosted an open studio at the Leighton Colony, with my little buddy the marten on the poster--a photo taken just seconds before he tracked down and executed the squirrel living inside my north wall.

About 30 people showed up for the cocktail party/reading, everyone having a dandy time with the wine and cheese (part of it provided by the Leighton program) and chit-chat. As people arrived, I'd greeted them with the standard line my father used to use: I'll pour you the first drink, after that you're on your own. At 5:30, though, I did what goes against the grain of a certain keep-the-party-vibe-going policy I think I learned from dad. I interrupted everyone so I could read a few poems.


The poems, mostly made from images and moments visible or imaginable through the windows around us in the studio, worked fine. Since Robert Kroetsch was on hand, I decided to publically acknowledge my writerly debt to his work by reading one of his poems, "Elegy for Wong Toy", a poem itself about honouring "one of my fathers". That worked pretty well too, I think.


Then back to the wining and cheesing. People gradually drifted off, leaving a hard core of 6 or so. At 7:20 I had to leave for the Wynton Marsalis concert. Turn the lights off and lock up when you leave, I told the rest of them.


At the concert, which was a blast, I ran into the man who was principal of the school where I had my first teaching job, from 1975-78, in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. He was a fabulous principal--willing to let me try things, not afraid to let me know if he thought I was getting a little carried away. (I got the sense that W.Marsalis shares that leadership quality. If the rhythm section got a little out of line, he'd just look at them from his trumpet chair and keep on looking until they got back into line.) This man, now retired, Alan Marshall by name, was the model administrator that no one else in my experience has matched. Another kind of father.


After the concert I was roaming around the Banff Centre campus, looking for someone to have a nightcap with. Seeing no one, I thought I'd head into the woods to the studio, do a blog entry or something. Damned if those cocktail partiers weren't still there, having a merry old time, all the booze long since consumed.


Off we went from there. This morning I cleaned up.


I forgot to mention that Andrea Przygonski, a printmater/papermaker from Adelaide, installed one of her stocking pieces in the studio.

Week

While I'm putting finishing touches on Natural Cause: The Poems of Stan Still, Stan's looking for his last word, maybe his last word ever. Maybe ever will be that word. (Dad used to end his letters that way: As ever.)

Somewhere through his window, in that sun just rising over the Bow valley, in some post-conceptualist junket, somewhere in his body, in the eyes of three elk cleaning up his apple peels, in the dream of his mother surprising her siblings by showing up at the dinner table, in that next cup of tea--he'll come up with his last word.

I'll give him a week.

At Banff

My eldest daughter got married last weekend, three days before my drive to Banff. "Will you write about the wedding?" my other daughter asked. Not directly, I said. But I'm here to work on my Stan Still book. Stan might have something to say about the wedding.

Her other comment was about how inspiring Banff must be. That's a topic--inspiration and place--I've been hired to speak about at the Saskatchewan Writers Guild fall conference. No, I'll claim. A mountain view is precisely as inspiring as a dusty campground outside of Brooks, or Level 1 of the parkade at the Banff Centre for the Arts. It's about the way you look, not what you look at, I'll claim. Still, is that sunlight bleeding to the forest floor? My old buddy Marten hooping along a log? A promise of moonlight later?

Riding

I walked over to Marilyn's place this afternoon, pretending it was 1957 and I loved horses.


Marilyn was out riding, as usual. I hung around anyway, pretending her family house wouldn't turn back into a Wascana Centre Authority storage facility.

Pretty soon her family farm on section 5 (township 17, range 19, west of the 2nd) would turn into Hillsdale.

Here is the view across the lake from Marilyn's house.

This would be about as close as I would get to Marilyn today.

First house, latest shadows

Here's the first house in Hillsdale--6 Scott street, built in 1955, year of the provincial jubilee.



Stucco siding looks old but may not be original. Roof isn't, sidewalk might be.

Superb instance of vintage curb, however.

I'll re-shoot these images without the shadouflage.

Stop

Had a beer with Mike Trussler the other night.


I enjoy talking to Mike, who knows a lot.

We exchanged updates on various writing projects. In the case of what I'm calling Hillsdale, an Auto-Geography, Mike asked "How will you know when to stop?"