George prepares to ring in the New Year

George is off to a New Year's party, and by the look of the mickey in his pocket, he's planning to tie one on.

As for the hat, it's battered even before the evening begins.

Whole lot of birds helped with this puzzle

This is a Charles Wysocki painting, with a lot of strange birds in it. It was pretty challenging, what with all the grass and stones, but the birds definitely helped.

This one took only two days; the other took three. But then for the Speckled Band puzzle, we didn't have a picture to work from.

The third and last of this season is a Renoir. I'm looking forward to that, but first, a well-earned day of rest doing other things.

Most singular case, Watson

The first puzzle of the season was based on a Sherlock Holmes case, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Some oddities here. If the room is that of Dr. Grimsby Roylott, as the top hat, safe, and pipe suggest, then why is there a woman's shawl on his chair? Also, what is that pair of spectacles doing on the floor? And why is the lantern in this room? Roylott's step-daughter Helen was the one who used it to signal to Holmes and Watson when the coast was clear.

But that's just the picture. An even stranger anomaly is the missing piece. In all my years of puzzling, I've never seen this before. Not only that but an extra piece, which is an almost duplicate of another piece, as shown below. What exactly happened at the jigsaw puzzle factory?  A comedian? A careless packer? A disgruntled employee? 'Tis a mystery indeed.

 

Car window reflects bare branches

The winter sunlight is rather weak.

Still, it's strong enough to reflect the beauty of the bare branches above in the window of this parked car on East Broadway.

The picture doesn't do it justice, but if you look carefully, you can see the branches reflected on the left side of the window.

Seen live, it was like a reflection in a clear pool.

Grandview-Woodland houses

Old Grandview-Woodland is a neighbourhood full of beautiful houses, many surrounded by lush mature gardens. Still looking good for another green Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all in carols

Here are some of my favourite Christmas carols:

"Once in Royal David's City" is sung with incomparable beauty by a boys' choir at King's College Cambridge.

"Angels we Have Heard on High" (in Latin here) and "Here we Come a Wassailing" are two golden classics.

"The Huron Carol"  can be heard here in Wendat (or Huron) as well as French and English.

"Joy to the World" and "Carol of the Bells" are lovely too. Choir leader extraordinaire Grenville Jones and The Silver Ring Choir of Bath sing these beautifully on a Christmas CD I got at their concert in Vancouver a few years back.

So many carols to recall. "Il est ne le divin enfant" is another great favourite, sung here by Siouxie and the Banshees. Then there is "The Holly and the Ivy," which harks back to the middle ages and earlier, alluding to the apparent magical properties of the plants that remained green through the darkest days of winter.

A bit of the history of the history of carols and the custom of carolling can be seen here. 

Favourite local choirs include the hundred-strong Vancouver Welsh Men's Choir (whose members are from all over, not just Wales), the Lyric Singers (of Boar's Head Madrigal Dinner fame) and Marcus Moseley's incredible Chorale.

One New Year's resolution already made: next year I'm joining a choir.

Amaryllis promise fulfilled

The long-awaited amaryllis turned out to be a surprise.

Instead of being dark pink or red, as expected, it came out white tinged with very pale pink.

Just a reminder that life is not always as expected, but it's important to embrace what we get and see the beauty in that.

May all enjoy the peace and beauty of the Christmas season.

People's Co-op Bookstore ready for the Toonie Bin

Perhaps this settles the matter about how to spell toonie. Not twonie.

This bookstore is an old Vancouver institution. It seems to me that back in the sixties, People's Co-op Bookstore was once located on Pender.

That would be near the venerable and famous antiquarian book dealer Macleod's Books, which was written up in 2011 in Macleans.

But I might be wrong. This current location on Commercial has long been People's home.

Narcissus blooms in defiance of deep midwinter

In the dead of winter, fragrant narcissus burst into bloom with the promise that the light will return.

These flowers are small and humble, except for their amazing scent. Yet the source of the name, from a Greek myth, evokes powerful imagery.

Narcissus was the boy who made the wood nymph Echo suffer so much from her unrequited love for him that she died of grief.

Deciding to give the vain boy a taste of his own medicine, the gods caused him to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool. The indifferent reflection spurned him as he had Echo.

Today we evoke this scene when we say someone is narcissistic. Indeed, psychology has named narcissism, a personality disorder, after this young man of myth.

Soft snow covers everything

The fresh white of new snow brings silence and newness to the winter solstice, the shortest day.

It reminds us to enter the Christmas season of quiet reflection and the joys of home and family.

The snow also shows us when animals like coyotes have passed, revealing their clear tracks.

And this weather invites us to go outside to walk and play in the short-lived wonderland of south coast snow, before it melts and turns to rain.

Glorious sunset between full moon and winter solstice

On White Rock Beach, a heavy bank of cloud retreats in time to show the setting sun, and a gull sits on a rock to enjoy the gorgeous colours as they are reflected in the clouds and sea.

Before the Poison, by Peter Robinson

Image from Peter Robinson's Official website

Listening to this book was quite a surprise to one accustomed to reading one Inspector Banks novel after the other.

A successful movie score composer, protagonist Chris Lowndes has plenty of money. His son and daughter have grown up. His American wife is dead, and he's writing her a piano concerto.

Hoping to come to terms with his grief over the loss of his beloved Laura, Chris leaves California and returns to his native Yorkshire to take up residence in a house he has never seen.

Located in a remote Yorkshire dale, Kilnsgate House, purchased by long distance arrangements, seems to welcome him. So does red-haired Heather, the real estate agent who arranged the sale.

Along with the mystery, this novel has snippets of history from WWII and the Cold War. Scenes take place from Yorkshire to London to rural France, to Cape Town. And that's just in the present time frame. Indirectly, we get to Santa Monica, Minneapolis and even the infamous secret military facility of Porton Down.

The Grace Fox we get to know from her wartime journals, kept during her service as a member of Queen Alexandra Nursing Corps does not seem to jibe with the one who was later hanged for poisoning her doctor husband.

Along with the protagonist, the reader keeps wondering why someone who did so much to save lives in Singapore and Malaya and Normandy would kill her husband Ernest.

As Lowndes manages to track down more of the story of Grace, he has a few secrets of his own to come to terms with. This gives the reader the double payoff of a surprise ending for him as well as the solution to the mysterious conundrum of Grace Fox.

Rose Ross brings my baby brother home from the hospital

I remember watching our neighbour, Rose, carry my brother in to the farm house. The snow was deep and drifted; the only things that were not white were a few fence posts that protruded above the silent sea of unremitting white.

The door opened and Rose stepped from the car into the fresh-fallen snow, decisively planting her delicate high-heeled boots with their swinging pompoms. They sank in the snow until only her slender legs were visible.

The driveway had not been cleared, but Rose plunged bravely forward, the bundled baby in her arms. Her slim-waisted coat was bottle green, with the wide fur collar that was fashionable then. An elegant winter hat was perched on her soft brown curls.

As she approached, I saw that she was smiling. Though her husband Clayton drank as heavily as Dad and the other war vet farmers in the area, Rose seemed to view their excesses with a humorous forbearance I couldn't help but admire. But I must have noticed that much later.

At the time of this memory, I was only two. I don't recall what my new brother looked like. I have no idea whether my mother got out of the car before or after her kind neighbour, or what look Dad had on his face when he came to the door to greet them.

Yet how well I remember the ineffably beautiful Rose.

Commuter selfie

Having chanced upon the concept by accidentally discovering the reversing feature of her camera phone, this Sky Train commuter takes a selfie in the form of a reflection in the plexiglass panel by the door of the train.

What is a selfie? Why, a picture taken of and by oneself, of course.

This newly minted word was recently named the Oxford Dictionary word of the year.

Amaryllis promise

Any day now, the Christmas amaryllis will burst into bloom. The one in the photo below represents the Huntingdon Society Amaryllis Campaign.

Off the rack outfits at Build a Bear

I used to tailor for a bear called George, seen here relaxing in a casual business suit on his bed at the Bye the Way B & B in Ottawa.

These days the clutch is slipping on my ancient Bernina, and I haven't time or patience to sew.

Luckily for me, Build a Bear now sells clothes and more, from soccer boots to bathing suits.

Today, to shop for a bear called Dr. Barry, I ventured into Metrotown, a veritable temple of consumerism I've avoided for years.

At Build a Bear, I knew I'd see something suitable, and sure enough, my luck was in. Dr. Barry now has a full set of scrubs to wear in the operating theater, and an X-ray to consult before he operates.

Merry Christmas, Barry. I hope you'll have time for a few rounds of golf during the holidays. 

Christmas poinsettia glory

These days 99 Nursery in Surrey is a veritable sea of Christmas flowers. The poinsettia, a tender native of the hotter regions of Mexico, is here the definitive symbol of Christmas. Each year it comes in a more stunning array of colours. In this climate, it needs protection from the cold.

Christmas reflections in the round

Two weeks ago, it was still warm enough to sit out on the patio at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

On a winter afternoon, this green globe contained a perfect reflection of Robson Square. Meanwhile, the Christmas elf stood half-hidden in the grass beneath,

I sat beneath this bulb enjoying food and a hot drink outdoors, and marveled at the mildness of our winter days.

Below, skaters in Robson Square, with its round dome.

Winter light as the solstice approaches

Just a few days ago, cold winter light made shadows sharp and crisp on this city neighbourhood of venerable trees.

Now a light dusting of snow has softened earth and sky, and the sharp cold has given way to milder temperatures.

The kids who were playing hockey on the Serpentine Fen yesterday will have to find an indoor rink for their game.

It's winter in Vancouver, and that means thaws and mild weather as well as occasional frost and snow.

The skaters below are near Ely, in Cambridgeshire, but the view is much the same. Photo from The Daily Mail.

Early sky full of snow was a tease but we have it now

Ten days ago, this spectacular winter morning sky promised snow, but didn't deliver it -- except to the mountain tops. Now the first snow is on the ground. Just enough to look beautiful without tying up traffic, and just enough to dust the top of the palm at 99 Nursery, below.

The Christmas season is officially open.

Befriending winter blues

"Make friends with the colour blue," said poet David Whyte at Point Grey United Church last Saturday.

Indeed, on a chilly winter afternoon, what could be more beautiful then these peerless blues of sky and mountains and sea, or sky alone?

 

Beautiful houses of old Point Grey

Representing a variety of traditional Vancouiver styles, historic Point Grey houses bask in the winter sunshine.

Architecture of a past Point Grey

This lovely church,West Point Grey United, absorbs winter sunshine in the late afternoon.

Though it is a thriving part of the community where it stands, its wood interior and stained glass evoke past times.

The cultural ideas that underpinned such buildings are already receding from view as communities evolve in new directions.

David Whyte in Vancouver

David Whyte image from his website

For David Whyte, the lived art of poetry teaches us how spirituality is a bodily experience. Poetry is ancient: Whyte mentioned the Irish Druidic tradition that goes back 5000 years. Poetry is not lucrative; it's impressive that this itinerant bard earns his living sharing the power of the spoken word.

To stay engaged with the mystery of life, says Whyte, we must "ask the beautiful questions." As pilgrims on our human path, we need to be touched by the extreme beauty in the outer world; this "elicits internal symmetry." Whyte illustrated this idea by quoting Wordsworth's "The Prelude," a Shakespearian sonnet, and a 13th century Japanese teacher of Zen, who expressed the same idea, which when translated, sounds something like this:

"If you find and name the world, this is illusion.
If the world finds you, this is enlightenment."

David Whyte spoke of marriage, with its symbolic purposes, as outlined in his wonderful book The Three Marriages: Re-imagining Work, Self and Relationship (2009 Riverhead). To enter into a marriage is to invite the certainty that your heart will be broken; this is necessary to make it grow.

Marriages, parenting and friendships are based on forgiveness, he said, and emphasized the value of having "a good healthy circle of friendship to sustain us." We must make friends not only with people but with the landscape, "the colour blue," and even our troubles. Heartbreak, even in a semantic sense, "is intimately connected to courage."

Whyte also spoke of work, encouraging us to keep our eyes on what draws and deepens us, and of prayer, calling it "talking to the Other." He cautions in his much-loved and much quoted line "how easily the thread is broken between this world and the next." (River Flow: New and Selected Poems.)

Life is mysterious but simple. The way to re-engage with the beautiful conversation is to stop having the one we are having now, to be in silence. Engaging with the larger questions of who we are and why we are here, we ask, "How, in this moment, can I become the ancestor of my future happiness?"

Like the pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, who call one another simply, Peregrino, Pilgrim, we must give up the "conversational identity" to return to our essence. And we must consider another question. How invitational are we in our interactions with others, especially those we love?

We should also allow ourselves much more mercy in those moments when we moult, shed our old skins, enter a new stage. Doubt comes through the ego, which tries to protect us, as it is bound by its nature to do. Yet the heart knows, and we can uncover that knowledge by reviving what Whyte refers to as "the beautiful conversation."

I sat in the balcony, and so did not see David Whyte at close range until the end of the day. Saw only his shock of dark hair, greying at the sides, cut long around his ears in the fashion of his native country. He spoke of how we are formed by the landscape, the weather, the voices of our childhood. His haircut, along with his words, echo his native Yorkshire, as well as his ancestral Ireland.  

While others waited at the end to have books signed, my books and CDs were in the car. Still, I felt moved to see this poet at close range, and to ask him a question. When my turn came I looked into his dark brown eyes, and asked if he ever had resistance to writing.

"I don't much, these days," he said, and then sensing my disappointment almost before I felt it, he added, "but I remember it."

"And how did you handle it?"

These eyes now shone from their nest of aging lines with a glint of humour. "Well, you write about the resistance." With that simple conversational exchange, I felt the message of the day land in me and I walked away quiet and satisfied.

As I approached the car, I thought about how my day had been bracketed by natural beauty and mystery. In the morning, I saw a wild coyote. As it paused on the sidewalk ahead to scratch itself, I first mistook it for a dog. Then, it looked at me briefly and I saw the eyes were wild; it loped away on feet so light they barely seemed to touch the earth.

The sun was nearly setting as I walked past the ranks of huge trees that line the streets of old Point Grey; beyond, the city lay distant and shining, the sky pink, and the sea my friend, the colour blue.

Healing through stories?

Plaque image from William Carlos Williams site. "The poem springs from the half spoken words of the patient," said the great American poet-physician.

Medicine connects the works of contemporary doctor novelists. Born in Kabul, Dr. Khaled Hosseini recalls physical and cultural traumas from his Afghan boyhood in The Kite Runner. A Thousand Splendid Suns portrays the courage and resilience of women in a male-dominated tribal society at war.

Dr. Vincent Lam is descended from ethnic Chinese who lived through the Vietnam war. His novel The Headmaster's Wager is set during the Tet Offensive, a decisive moment in the conflict. In writing it, he drew from the real life experience of his grandfather, who had left China for Vietnam long before the war broke out.

Dr. Daniel Kalla has written two connected novels about Jews fleeing Europe for Japanese-occupied Shanghai after Europeans turned against them on Kristallnacht, just before WWII. His novel The Far Side of the Sky came out in 2011 and was followed this year by Rising Sun, Falling Shadow. Both were published by HarperCollins.

All three of these doctor novelists portray the pain of people who have been displaced and whose lives have been made chaotic by war. All three also deal with themes of feudal culture, as well as ethnic identity and the damage done by xenophobic bias.

The three men's medical careers have followed different tracks, however. Hosseini used to get up at 4:30 to write, and then go to work at his medical practice. However, as he explained to Marsha Lederman in his recent Vancouver appearance, he stopped practicing medicine once his story- telling career was launched. When his patients began to talk more about his novels than about their medical conditions, he thought it was time to turn his full attention to his calling of healing through stories.

Lam, on the other hand, has kept his day job as an emergency physician in a Toronto hospital, and also does some teaching at the U of T. In a reading from The Headmaster's Wager at the Surrey Central Library in the summer, he explained that he loves both jobs but keeps them separate. On the days he treats patients, he does not write, and conversely, when he does write, he devotes his days exclusively to that pursuit.

Kalla, who heads the emergency team at a downtown Vancouver hospital, also continues to practice medicine and write. Like Lam (Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, 2006, made into a film series),  he was inspired to write by the 2003 SARS crisis, in Kalla's case a thriller called Pandemic. He is also an assistant clinical professor at UBC, his medical alma mater. He devotes time to public speaking on various topics too.

Clearly, at least for these three writers, there is a powerful connection between stories and healing.

Khaled Hosseini speaks in Vancouver

Image of Khaled Hosseini from NPR

Last night at St. Andrews Wesley church, Khaled Hosseini was interviewed by Globe and Mail's Western Arts Correspondent, Marsha Lederman.

The evening began with a reading from Hosseini's latest novel, And the Mountains Echoed (Viking 2013).

The passage portrayed a walk taken by a pair of teenage twin girls through their home village in Afghanistan in the late 1940s. One girl is beautiful and she knows it; the other is unattractive, and resigned to not being noticed. On this particular walk, though, she is shocked to discover something new about her sister.

A California-trained medical doctor who has lived in the US since he was a teen, Hosseini was catapulted into his true calling as a storyteller by a short news item. When he heard that the Taliban intended to ban kite flying, he went to his computer. As he began to write his way into the vivid memories of his early life flying kites with his friends in Kabul, he was unaware that the novel was already taking shape in his mind. Later, as he worked on it, he rose at 4:30 each morning "to see what would happen next."

It's always fascinating to hear about a writer's creative process, and reassuring too, for others who engage in the mysterious process of story-making. In response to Lederman's question about how he "knew" a woman's feelings about aging, Hosseini replied that by spending time with his characters through successive drafts, he "gets to know their essence," understanding them so deeply that "gender is no longer an issue."

Like many other writers including Diana Gabaldon, he avoided censoring or over-considering his story by telling himself and sincerely believing that it would never be published. Hosseini also thinks the timing of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center was a historic factor that helped generate interest in his novel, then half-completed.

Indeed, he chillingly recalled how one agent he approached told him books about Afghanistan were already passe. This agent was following the sabre-rattling towards Iraq, and told Hosseini that books from there would be the next thing.

When a high school teacher asked him a question about the symbolism of kites in his work, he said what any serious author or reader would: since each individual reader brings a unique history and sensibility to the work, there are many valid answers to such questions beyond what the writer himself may be aware of while writing.

"Writers write books and give them to [readers], so they can tell them what they're about," he said. I was also delighted and astonished to hear him speak of plates spinning in the air as he described the novel writing process. Recently, thinking about my own work, I have been using that same metaphor;  I take this coincidence as a touchstone to help me hold my courage and finish the book.

When asked about the negative emotions -- shame, dislocation, survivor guilt -- that gave rise to his writing, Hosseini says he is glad to have been able to use these to motivate him to finish his stories and to find ways to help the Afghan people who have been "born in the wrong time and place." With earnings from his meteoric success as an author, Hosseini has established a charitable foundation to help the women and children of Afghanistan.

While The Kite Runner reveals the violent breach of innocent friendship between two boys, Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, portrays the lives of two Afghan women buffeted by feudal mores and internecine struggles. Determined to survive, and to protect their children, the two friends find strength in each other.

Unlike two other contemporary Canadian doctor authors, Daniel Calla and Vincent Lam, Hosseini no longer practices medicine. He now focuses his energies on healing through stories. It was wonderful to hear him speak and read in Vancouver last night.

Christmas Lights on St. Paul's Hospital

Downtown is a veritable sea of Christmas lights, with St Paul's Hospital on Burrard in the forefront of the display.

Gingerbread houses at the Hyatt Hotel

One of the signs of Christmas is the arrival at the Hyatt Hotel of Gingerbread Lane, the annual display of gingerbread houses (and more elaborate buildings of the same cake).

Sometimes less is more, as in the case of this trio of gingerbread cabins.

The wall decor is ornate, but otherwise they have a classical plainness. The little trees are nice too.

Blurred horizon line

The pier at White Rock.

It was one of those days when the line between sea and sky is almost invisible.

The Measure of a Man by JJ Lee

Cover image from JJ Lee website

This memoir delivers the deep satisfaction of a good read. It is funny, poignant and informative. Whether the image is of Oscar Wilde, Georgio Armani, King Edward VIII or Beau Brummell, I'll never look at a man's suit in the same way again.

The author fascinates us with the suit's history, contemporary variations, and symbolism, as well as how to accessorize it. He even advises readers which front coat buttons to fasten. With my trusted guide, a journalist, architect, designer and aspiring tailor, I got to experience things a woman never could in real life. For instance, while listening in on JJ's man-to-man chat with the master tailors of Savile Row, I learned precisely what is meant by a bespoke suit, along with the ins and outs of a recent court case that hinged on that definition.

The thread that binds the book together is the story of a practical project: the author, who lost his father to alcoholism, is trying to make over his Dad's last remaining suit so that he can wear it.

He hopes that through this process, he can find his own way forward and regain some of the sense of a father-and-son bond he sorely missed as a child. In remaking the suit to fit him, he uncovers and deconstructs his father's life history, gains a mature perspective, and forgives past wrongs.

As part of his quest, JJ Lee apprentices himself to Vancouver master tailor Bill Wong, who in his eighties is still working happily in a tailor shop that opened a hundred years ago. Through their long and close association, Bill becomes a father figure, and helps JJ find some of the lost parts of himself.

Though it has some harrowing, even tragic scenes, the multi-layered story of JJ's tailoring quest is truly heartwarming, and the writer's fresh and vigorous prose is a joy to read.

Meanwhile, master coat-maker Bill Wong stitches coats at Modernize Tailors, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. (Another tailor in the shop specializes in pants.)

Children of Air India by Renee Saklikar

Renee Saklikar image from Royal City Record

Children of Air India: Un/Authorized Exhibits and Interjections was launched yesterday in the town where Renee Saklikar grew up, practiced law, and heard the news that her Aunt and Uncle had been killed on Air India flight 182.

Hosted by New Westminster Poet Laureate Candice James, the event took place in the Back Room of the Heritage Grill on Columbia Street.

The room was packed and the crowd listened rapt as Saklikar read from her work. Before reading, this woman, wife, lawyer and niece of some of the lost ones, thanked the audience for being there to witness, from a poetic perspective, her meditations on the tangled memories of the deliberate sabotage of an airplane load of travelers in June 1985.

The book, she says, chose her, insisted on being written by her, even though she felt unequal to the task. It is not easy to speak of the notorious murder of 329 people, "82 of them children under 13," as she reminded us. The one most of the the killers got away with.

The questions raised by this poet and this work are difficult and troublesome and of great consequence. What does it mean to live in a society where a belated and bungled and costly judicial process fails to call anyone to account for the mass murder of a routine planeload of travelers? How are we all, as members of this society, implicated in that dreadful history?

The poet does not rant or complain or judge. Instead, she patiently researches many documents about this real event. She writes in response to her findings, shows us her images, asks us to consider them. And with each one presented, she reminds us "Another version of this moment exists."

Let us witness with her; let us opens our eyes, ears, hearts; stop to consider, to face, to remember.
(Nightwood Editions, 2013)

Alice Munro -- Canada's first literary Nobel Laureate

Photo from CBC

Upon first reading Alice Munro's first short story collection, Who do you think you are, I was left with a feeling of discomfort that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Could it be related to the fact that that was exactly the question my mother asked me as I negotiated my way through the rebellious teen years?

Mom's follow-up question was also a classic of its time, "The Queen of Sheba?" She left no space between the two questions for me to sass her back.

Reading, I wanted to ask the Munro the same question. How dare she expose these flawed country women who were so uncomfortably close to the flawed women I knew? I was very young.

Since her early work, the deft delivery of the discomfort of home truths about the ordinary lives of ordinary women has remained a Munro hallmark. Over time, it grew on me; I began to understand it.

The lives of ordinary women were "not a subject," an Oxford lecturer once told me. Or so she was told by her male colleagues at The New Statesman in the 1960s when she proposed to write a feature on them. Now Alice Munro has been recognized for her unique contribution to literary life.

"Proper thing," some of my ordinary female ancestors would say of Munro's Nobel Prize for Literature. This summation would be punctuated with a crisp nod. I hear those now-dead voices pronouncing on this award, and I feel their comforting solidarity. I couldn't agree more.