Abandoned Cross Atlantic Bridge

Abandoned Cross-Atlantic Bridge, originally uploaded by Bemep.

Gotta love it!

Stolen Truck

Stolen Truck, originally uploaded by Turtlepace.

This just in from my friend Gary in Squamish:

Hi everyone,

Not all of you know Adam Protter, but I am passing this along just in case any of you see his truck.

His daughter is severely handicapped and the equipment she needs to be able to ride in a vehicle was in that truck.
Read below for more info and to see a picture.

Maybe people with blogs and websites could help pass this along as well?

Thanks,
GR

Hello
Someone stole our truck tonight. Out of our driveway while we were eating dinner. No kidding!
The real problem is that Mary’s Van was at Barney’s for a repair, so Morgan’s Easy-On Vest, her ONLY car harness, was in the truck and stolen with it, along with my�aluminum wheelchair ramp.
Morgan is grounded. She cannot travel unless it’s by cab. She’s a prisoner.
We are a minimum of 4 months away from a wheelchair van, and only if funding is approved. It took a year and a half for Transport Canada to Approve her Easy-On Vest/Harness and 4 months for it to be custom made in Florida and shipped here.
No school bus will take her to school, so she doesn’t go unless we cab it, 11 KM each way.
Talk about a mobility issue.
Spread the word. If you see it, in a ditch, a field or lane, call the police! Please!
Thank you
Adam

River Thieves

Just finished “River Thieves” by Micheal Crummey, an unsettling, hopeless story set in the Newfoundland of the early 1800’s. Here is a review from the Guardian:

Saturday October 12, 2002
The Guardian

River Thieves
by Michael Crummey
371pp, Canongate, £10.99

This is a novel with a vast epic sweep, a tale of racial conflict set against the harsh and beautiful backdrop of Newfoundland in the early 19th century. John Peyton and his ageing father set their traps and fishing lines in a country whose native inhabitants, the Beothuk, have been driven to the verge of extinction by the activities both of the European settlers and the neighbouring Mi’kmaq tribe. The narrative centres on one incident, the murder of two Beothuk men by a raiding party which includes the two Peytons.

It’s an unsettling tale, not least because of its author’s admirable refusal either to moralise or to simplify. There’s a telling ambiguity in the very title: are the “river thieves” the raiding Beothuk - the embattled warriors who steal traps, destroy salmon nets and at one point plunder the Peytons’ loaded boat - or the usurping settlers, pillaging native dwellings and burial sites as they move clumsily through a land they can never honestly call their own?

One of the settlers, Reilly, has in fact been transported to Newfoundland after a misspent early life as a river thief on the Thames, and it’s through this shadowy but important figure that Crummey most fruitfully explores the complex patterns of possession and dispossession that run through the novel as a whole.

Doubly displaced as an Irish Londoner exiled from England, Reilly is in some respects the counterpart of the frightened and bewildered Beothuk girl whom Peyton remembers being exhibited on a tavern table during his own childhood in England. Yet at the same time he is, of all the settlers, the one most truly at home in the wilderness: married to a Mi’kmaq woman and on reasonable terms with his Beothuk neighbours, he seems to hint at the possibility of some more humane and accommodating existence. But then - and it’s in such twists that the novel’s unsentimental realism is most strikingly apparent - he is crucially, if not entirely culpably, implicated in the murder.

Woven in with this bleak account of displacement and genocide is another, more intimate story involving Cassie, initially taken on by the elder Peyton as his son’s tutor and now housekeeper to the two men. Shy, inexperienced and hampered by the belief that Cassie may actually be his father’s lover, Peyton struggles variously to suppress and to articulate his own slow-burning passion for her. But Cassie’s reasons for staying in the house are darker and more complicated than he can possibly guess, and this strand of the narrative offers only the chilliest of resolutions.

Crummey has a sharp eye for detail and an often breathtaking lucidity of expression, and much of the novel’s power derives from his skilful delineation of his chosen territory. Snowflakes shining like flint-sparks as they drift through the firelight, the play of shadows on the wall of a makeshift tent, the pressure of icy water against a swan-skin cuff as Peyton works wildly to free a man dragged beneath broken ice - such details bring us sharply into contact with a land which the law-enforcer and map-maker Buchan disturbingly conceives of as “devoid of any suggestion of design”.

Crummey’s attention to detail isn’t invariably rewarding: occasionally the narrative flow is clogged by inert catalogues and tediously precise statistics. But the overriding impression from this novel is of a remarkably gifted writer working with passion and imagination as he recreates the interplay of vanished human lives in a spectacularly inhuman environment.

The Kite Runner

Our new pick for this month is “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. His website is at: http://www.khaledhosseini.com/

I’ve only just started but am already enmeshed in the intricacies of the relationships that are portrait.

Isabel Allende writes:

“A wonderful work… This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years. All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, honor, guilt, fear redemption…It is so powerful that for a long time everything I read after seemed bland.”

The Kite Runner

Our new pick for this month is "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. His website is at: http://www.khaledhosseini.com/

I've only just started but am already enmeshed in the intricacies of the relationships that are portrait.

Isabel Allende writes:

"A wonderful work... This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years. All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, honor, guilt, fear redemption...It is so powerful that for a long time everything I read after seemed bland."

Dusk Over Vancouver

Dusk over Vancouver, originally uploaded by Turtlepace.

Copycats

http://www.bubbleshare.com

Are they trying to copy Flickr? Tough luck!

Mama's Fries

Here are healthy fries that don't put money into the pockets of fast food chains. They are easy to make but take a bit of time.

For two small baking trays and to feed a family of four use about 10 large potatoes. Peel the potatoes. Slice them into wedges. The wedges should be able to sit on the tray without falling over. Spray the wedges with vegetable oil. Sprinkle with salt and curry powder (or other spices to taste). Bake at 175C for 90min or until browned and crispy.

Links - Library Elf

http://www.libraryelf.com/Default.aspx
Cool site to track your library books and manage all your library loans (on different cards) and hold. No more late fees.

Consuming Less

After spending half the day trying to clean-up my kids playroom and having read the article about "compact" - people who vow to not buy anything new (excluding underwear and food) for a whole year - in the Globe and Mail on Saturday I have to admit I am ready to further travel down that road. Not that I haven't taken the turn in the road already (just haven't cleaned up the playroom in a long time and left it up to the kids - mistake).

I am not your typical consumer. I frequent two big box stores out of necessity (food and underwear) and buy my produce at a small neighborhood store. I don't regularly go to a mall or any other stores for that matter. Fashion and fads blissfully pass by me. Frankly, I don't care my dear! We more often than not buy second hand electronics, garden tools and clothes (I have been very fortunate that mother and mother in law dress both me and my husband (we are happiest in fleece and t shirts that we wear to death) and supply hand me downs for the kids from the cousins). We've never owned a new car. We are craigslist afficionados and always post stuff we have grown out off for sale on craigslist.

Yet, there is still too much stuff in the house. Time to clean...once I finish with the playroom of course!

No Traffic on Burrard Street

No Traffic on Burrard Street

Originally uploaded by ClubFatAss.

Ever seen Burrard Street that lonely? Try getting up early on New Years Day and run the Vancouver New Years Day Fat Ass 50…