Afghan storytelling evening

"Peace bears" wear traditional Afghan garb

Last night a non-profit organization called Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan hosted a storytelling evening in Surrey. This group works to promote education for Afghan girls and women.

Activities include training teachers, providing libraries and school equipment and hosting a Centre of Research and Innovation for Afghan teachers at the University of Kabul.

Following a delicious dinner prepared by the Afghan Chopan restaurant, poems were read, songs were sung and storytellers spoke on a variety of subjects. Accompanied by slides, these tales educated and inspired the audience. 

Lauryn Oates, Programs director of the organization, talked about its history and emphasized its important goals of building human capital in Afghanistan by educating girls and empowering women, as well as educating and engaging Canadian women as world citizens.

One passionate young judo expert described the benefits gleaned from the judo she learned with other girls and boys in Kabul. A communications engineer described the current state of cell phone and wireless internet coverage.

A retired geologist showed and described Band-e Amir National Park and other astonishingly beautiful geographical features of his mountainous home country, and showed slides of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, already faceless after damage inflicted by Genghis Khan. Deliberately destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, these remarkable and ancient works of art were recalled by a Canadian woman who saw them on a youthful trip to Bamiyan in the 1970s.

A young Afghan woman spoke about Afghan music, past and present. I learned that Kabul Dreams is a popular contemporary band and Afghan Star is a televised talent show "like American Idol."

The next annual symposium of this valuable volunteer-run organization will be held in Banff next October.

Mary's Wedding recalls First World War Cavalry battle in Moreuil Wood

Image from Peninsula Productions

Stephen Manicotte's one-act play is currently running at the Black Box Theatre in White Rock, and the first matinee was sold out. With a simple stage set that suggests in turn a barn, a horse, a war zone and a formal tea, the cast of two carries the audience back to WWI.

The play's time line goes backwards; "Tonight," the young actor tells us, "is just a dream" that "begins at the end and ends at the beginning."

Young players Julia Seidlanowska and Harrison Macdonald move from humour to pathos to romance and carry it all off beautifully. Playing until November 15, this is well worth seeing.

Biker Dogs at White Rock

On Marine Drive in White Rock, two biker dogs wait outside Whitby's Coffee House for their human.

Somehow, these pups look too small and timid to fit the bill as Biker Dogs, but that's what they are.

There's a good story here -- I just don't know what it is. Yet.

Learning history by reading fiction: Joseph Boyden, Kate Grenville and Diana Gabaldon

Book cover image from the National Post

At a panel presentation at the recent SIWC, writers of historic fiction agreed that many people learn their history through fiction. How do novelists imagine the past, not as painted by the whitewash brushes of history, but as it really might have been? Research, imagination, memory.

The latest novel of Joseph Boyden unfolds a poignant and utterly believable account of the troubled personal interactions that ensue when a Jesuit priest from France lands joins a group of Hurons at war with nearby Iroquois. The author is descended from both Anishinaabe and Jesuit roots.

In The Secret River (2005), Australian author Kate Grenville portrays a colonial society that began as a penal colony. In this novel we follow a poor London couple following a brush with a harsh legal system which allows a prisoner to escape hanging by agreeing to be transported to Australia.

Once there, protagonist William Thornton must pay a high personal price for land and freedom; this casts a long shadow on his eventual success. "The great power of fiction," says Grenville, is that it's not an argument: it's a world. Inhabit it for a while...and you're likely to come out a little changed."

We definitely learn a lot about history by entering the fictional worlds created by good writers. In fact, I learned more as I drove home from the SIWC listening to Diana Gabaldon's latest novel. Her tale portrays the complex and shifting loyalties that characterized the North American colonial period preceding the American Revolutionary War. 

Weird and wonderful cloud

Maybe it's just me, finally slowing down enough to notice.

Or maybe we really are getting more amazing cloud formations.

This one, on the Cariboo Highway, was a real cake taker.

So thick and substantial you'd think something big was concealed inside it. A spaceship, maybe?

In the eye of the storm

It smells like bubble gum, and the colours resemble that too.

Being surrounded by the strange suds feels like being a storm chaser in the middle of a hurricane. It also sounds a bit like a waterfall.

All in all, it's an unusual sensation, felt only when we sit alone, with suds covering the windows all around us.

Inside the car wash!

Fall masquerades as spring in Bear Creek Park

Like the goldenrod seen on White Rock beach recently, this rhododendron, blooming outside Bear Creek Gardens, suggests March rather than November.

Without the surrounding clues like fallen leaves and bare trees, it would be easy to think this was a spring bloom.

It probably was -- just decided to take advantage of suitable weather to produce a second round of flowers.