'Canada' Day

 

As a child of settlers, it took some time before I began to understand the role of Europeans (in particular the French and British) in the formation of this land.

I was privileged in having history teachers who taught the actual oppressive nature of the settlement (theft) of this land from the First Nations people who had always lived here.  I began my journey of realization at 16, learning the facts of the way this land, this 'country' was formed.  The racism, oppression and indeed, genocide that was committed, not just to First Nations people, but people of colour who also came here to have a better life than what was on offer in other countries.

My teachers were not 'shaming' us descendants of the settlers, but encouraged us to work to be aware of the injustice and think about what had been done to the original inhabitants of this land.  To open our eyes and think.  And think about what kind of country we wanted to live in.

Unfortunately some people thought it was just fine and dandy the way it was/is.

Perhaps I was more receptive to the information because of my extensive reading, but also because my mother's family was Quebecois and her lived experience of being discriminated against because of that.  Perhaps it was because my father was from German culture, and the lingering effects of the war meant people like him were harassed and discriminated against - even though he had done his duty and fought in the Canadian armed services for this country, 'his' country.

Or perhaps I'm just more empathetic.  Or took the lessons I learned in Sunday School - you know, the ones that said 'love your neighbour', 'feed the hungry', 'heal the sick' - to heart.  And then could not reconcile those lessons with what settlers and politicians did to the original peoples of this land.

So no, I don't 'celebrate' Canada Day, as such.  I take this day to stop and reflect.  I think about how little has changed, how many people in this country in this day and age, are still being discriminated against.

I think about how my 'white-ness' has given me opportunities.  That the colour of my skin has never prevented me from doing anything.  My white skin has never stood in my way, just because of being this colour.  

And while life was not 'easy' growing up as part of a blue collar worker household, my life was never made *worse* due to my skin colour.

I think about that a lot.  

Now that I am retired (for certain values of) I have the freedom to be a lot more vocal about my beliefs.  I no longer worry over much if I offend someone who thinks their white skin is somehow better than someone else's.  

At 16 I scored liberal leaning on the political quadrant and over the years, when I've re-taken the questionnaire, I have continued to score pretty much the same.  

So as a 'leftie' I have not become more extreme.  *I* have not moved the goalposts.  *I* still believe that regardless of someone's skin tone, they are equally human and deserving of basic decency and rights.  Making sure someone else has the same rights as I do DOES NOT DIMINISH MY RIGHTS.  As the meme says - it's not pie.

To the people on the right hand end of the political spectrum, I repeat I HAVE NOT MOVED FURTHER LEFT.  Perhaps it is you who have hardened YOUR attitude?   Moved further right???

Have I changed my thoughts?  Yes, of course I have.  I have grown my circle to include more variations from the 'norm'.  At 16 it was to realize that people who are not considered 'white' were just as human, just as deserving of equality.  I also became aware of LGBTQ folk, and made sure there was room for acceptance (from me, at least).  I learned about the various different ways people thought about themselves in terms of gender, and enlarged my circle.  When Trudeau pere declared that the nation has no business in the bedrooms of the country and worked to make marriage between people of the same gender legal, I was happy for them.  Love who you want to love.

When First Nations students began getting scholarships and took law degrees and began suing the government to try to regain some of what had been stolen from them, my mother was furious.  I was happy for them.  Because they should never have been taken away in the first place.

In my 20s abortion was accepted as health care, and birth control made available regardless of marital status.  I was in the wave of women who began to work towards financial autonomy, getting credit in my own name, having my own bank account, my own credit cards, taking out loans and running my own business.  (It helped to have a spouse willing to assist me by co-signing my first couple of loans.)

And the alt-right wants to take all of that away.  

We have our own issues here in Canada.  A growing number of white folk are becoming ever more violent in the rush to remove rights from other people.  Especially people of colour.  Women.  They want to impose their perverted 'christianity' on every other person.

I always expected the pendulum to swing.  What I did not expect was how hard the right worked to put the mechanisms in place to turbo power that swing.

I don't care what you think about the Liberal Party of Canada in general, or Mr. Trudeau in particular.  I want you - if you are a white person - to think about what the world would look like with the alt-right in power.  If you can't imagine it, I suggest you take a good long hard look at oh, Nazi Germany in the 30s.  And ask yourself, do you really want to live like that?  Or do you want democracy to die?  And if you live in Canada and think we are immune from what is happening in the US, I suggest you take a look at what is happening - again! - in Ottawa - right now - and the 'convoy' that wants nothing more than to overthrow the current government.

It was never about masks.  It was never about vaccines.  It is straight up wanting to take over and impose their will on everyone else.  It was always the power.  

And if you are interested to know where on the political compass you fall, here is a website that will take you through the process...  (don't like this one?  There are others - but they all ask equally difficult questions meant to make you really THINK about your value system.)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Grief

 

The rose bushes along the public pathway are gone now - but not forgotten.  And I still have the photo I took with my cell phone a few years ago.

Grief is a tricksy thing.  We know that we grieve over the loss of loved ones, be they human or pet.  To grieve over the loss of a living being that held meaning for you is accepted.  Normal.  Expected.

We we also grieve over other things, to a greater or lesser extent.

Expectations dashed.  Events cancelled.  Failures.

Some people deal with the failure of their bodies and how that failing body impacts their quality of life.  What they can actually do.  Or not.

There are many ways to grieve.  And many things to grieve about.

So, me.

Accepting that I cannot teach in person anymore.  The long journeys, the time zone shifting, the stress of the travel - will I make it?  Will my BAGS make it?  Will I never again experience the glow in the eyes of students who 'get' it, AS they get it?  Their elation at understanding.  Their anticipation of continuing the journey.  The sheer joy of learning.  Improving and feeling competent instead of clumsy.  

So I hesitated when I got home.  I'd made the decision.  But had I been hasty?  Given another year of aging (and who knows what *other* health issue that may crop up in that 12 months) could I actually, effectively, go back to Olds?

So I waited.  I waited to see if my body recovered from the journey.  I looked up how covid was doing.  I thought long and hard.  And today I took a deep breath and notified the college that this year would be my last year.  Which should give them ample time to find another teacher.  If they even start working on it now.  

But now it's official.  Notice sent, and accepted.  I'm done.

However I am not done with teaching entirely.  I have been working on the classes for SOS and am just about ready to sit down with scratch pad and start making notes.

But a big chunk of me is sad.  So I am giving myself space to grieve.  To focus on my current students, both Olds and SOS.  To reassure myself that I *can* still teach, even if it isn't in person.  I am still knowledgeable.   Still capable of crafting a lesson plan and working out filming details.  I can still answer questions.  Seems I can write technical issues fairly well.  

So I grieve.  But accept that it is time.  And I'm not *quite* done.  Yet.  And I can still help students.  Encourage them.  Give them information.  Resources.

Grieving is not a do it and you're done.  It's a process.  And it will take time for me to set my disappointment aside as I reduce my activity horizon once more.  While I am 'able' for now, my ability to do the things I've done for 40 years is diminishing.  And in the end?  It's ok.  And I will find the joy in this new way of teaching.

Because I'm not done yet.  Quite.

Trimming Plates

 

As I move forward, life has become a matter of trimming the spinning plates.

In 2019 I stopped doing craft fairs and travelling to teach (other than Olds).  When the pandemic hit we were already in the process of downsizing - getting rid of my off site storage and work site, getting rid of equipment, constantly re-arranging the studio to try and fit everything that had been stored off site into my studio.

Gradually I stopped doing other things, like offering articles to publications.  Not that I didn't still have things to say.  It was mostly feeling like I'd already said everything over and over again and with the stress of the pandemic and my health I simply didn't have the little grey cells to write something that I'd already covered multiple times in several different formats.

To use an 'antique' phrase...I was feeling like a broken record.  (If you are below a certain age, I'm quite sure you have no idea what that means - just understand that I was tired of repeating the same thing over and over again.)

My personal stance has always been to try and bring something 'new' to the craft.  So I began looking at the principles that illustrate the bones of the craft, rather than just tell people what to do.

If you give someone a fish, they eat for the day.  If you teach them how to fish, they can feed themselves.  Especially if you give them the tools to do it.

In weaving, part of the 'tools' is understanding the principles.  And then they get to decide how to express those principles in their own way.

When I chose to retire, I thought I would dig into the weave structures that were too 'time consuming' for me to explore when we relied on my work to bring in an income.  Instead I had no brain power to do anything except the tried and true.  

With deteriorating health, I also began to feel the pressure to get rid of my yarn stashes.  Instead of exploring, pushing boundaries, digging deeper into the craft, I was focusing on using up the yarn that I already earned.

After two years I have used up one shelving unit of yarn, in one room, and several shelves of yarn in another room.  Over the weekend, I emptied three boxes of yarn (2/20 mercerized cotton) and once I finish the current warp and do one more with the 2/16 cotton, the plan is to pivot to using the 2/20 and weave the fine linen - and any other fine yarns suitable for tea towels - I already own.  And believe me, you get a lot of play value for very fine yarns!

From time to time I get an email from Handwoven with their up coming themes.  I read them, decide I don't really want to submit something and hit 'trash'.  I've just sent an article to the Guild of Canadian Weavers that I was asked to provide and which should appear in an issue of their Bulletin.  I've written a yarn review for Sweet Georgia, which should appear on their website soon.  I've offered to write more but they haven't let me know what kind of content they are looking for.  And I'm too busy right now to think about it.  But I'm sure that I will.

Yesterday I did a lot of thinking about the next class for School of Sweet Georgia.  By the end of this week I should have things organized in my mind about the content and how to go about presenting.  I worked out one issue that was puzzling me and I think it will work.  It should make it possible to do that class in one day, by recording out of order.

I found my lace samples so I don't have to re-weave those, but I will do a sample with a new-to-me yarn.  It's thicker than I would ordinarily choose for a lace weave, but that same thickness will be easier to see on camera.  

And then I need to think about projects to go along with those classes because they like to offer an actual project to help their students learn the lesson(s).

But as I take a good, long, hard, look at my studio, I see where I still have months, nay *years* worth of work to actually use up my stash to the point where I can be free of that obligation to use it up, not leave it for Doug or my friends to deal with when I'm gone.  Or simply unable to weave anymore.

While I would love to be able to keep weaving into my 80s, there is no guarantee that I will live that long.  Like Bonnie Raitt sings, time becomes more precious, the less of it you have.  

My father died age 56, my brother 51.  Mom lived to 90, but the last 5 years were fraught with health issues.  I'm already having health issues.  I may not have many more years of weaving left in me.

Don't pooh pooh me - I'm not being morbid, I'm being realistic.  Because of that, I can make plans accordingly!  

So I will continue to trim the spinning plates.  I will give my body rest time.  But I will also do what I can to weave and teach weaving.  Until I can't.

Dust Settles

 

This is an old photo of part of my woven 'stash'.  Over the years, my various stashes have been moved around, shifted from place to place, while I tried to tetris more stuff into the same amount of real estate.

Earlier this month I participated in a guild sale so most of my tea towels got boxed up and moved to the venue, then moved back here when it was over.  But while that was happening we were *also* getting ready to leave for Olds and so those boxes continue to sit on the floor while I try to figure out what's next.  Goat trails are beginning to appear again...

Now that we are home from Olds, there are yet more bins/boxes filled with stuff that I need to deal with.  Do I keep?  Give away?  Trash?

While at Olds I gave a very large box of woven samples to my teaching assistant, who said she was delighted to have them.  I hope they are useful to her.  They are no longer useful to me and it was time to let them go.

I'm at the 2/3s mark of the current warp with the next 2/16 warp designed.  So another 7 or maybe 8 towels to weave and the current warp will be finished.  And then the last (for now) 2/16 warp will go into the loom.  That won't *quite* use up all of the 2/16 (and 16/2) yarn, but will will come very close, indeed.

But for someone who is 'retired' (for certain values of) I still have a shit tonne of inventory left.  I have taken to giving more of it away, primarily to my health care providers - because they are keeping me alive and able to weave.  They deserve something more...personal...from me.  I think.  

The guild has several more sales opportunities over the summer, then the big craft fair in the fall.  

And in the meanwhile, I keep churning out more tea towels.  Because it is a lot easier to get rid of finished textiles than bits and pieces of tubes.

While I'm working on 'finishing' the 2/16 cotton, I am beginning to examine the lesson plan for the recording in October.  I've emailed some questions to the team and expect to get some feedback soon.  In the meantime I keep thinking, slowly, in the back of my mind.  Not ready to pull those thoughts out into the light quite yet.

It was not an easy decision to make, to stop teaching the Olds program in Olds.  But my body was adamant that such long trips were no longer feasible.  For either of us.  We are both getting older (better than the alternative, amirite?) but still.  Lugging boxes around, carrying them up the stairs, shoving them into the back of the van, unloading at the other end, then reverse it all going home?  Time to stop.

But I'll tell you one thing for free - I am going to miss the personal interaction with people as they hit an ah-HA moment.  And that moment of discovery, of sudden knowledge, I will miss being a part of that.  Very much.  

The next best thing is to keep working with School of Sweet Georgia.  And so far they seem to want to do that, so...

This week is busy with appointments and meetings, but I'm letting the sectional beaming class content swirl around in the pot at the back of my mind, and I should be about ready to start pulling that one together by next week.  I figure one day of taping that if I plan it out efficiently (as in out of chronological order - have fun editor!) and perhaps two days for the lace weaves.  I need to really sit down and think through the content and how best to present that topic.  Again, there may be some out of order taping to challenge the editor.

In the meantime I still have my reluctant body to encourage to keep going.  I have made a commitment to SOS for two years.  After that?  I'll have to see how things are going.  By then I'll be nearly 75 and frankly, when I started weaving, I figured 75 would be the limit of my ability to do much of anything - weave, or teach.  So...time will tell...

This week is time to let the dust of the past few weeks activity settle and rest, then hopefully return to the planning, thinking, analyzing, thinking, writing, more thinking, in preparation for the Next Big Project.

A Good Life

 

An unexamined life, they say, isn't worth living.

Well, about that...

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't think about life, and stuff.  Maybe because I read?  I dunno.  Maybe I read because I wanted to understand.  I wanted to think things through, and it helped me do that when I discovered how other people think things through.  And really, a book (or other forms of story-telling, including songs), are really just how other people have thought things through.

What can I say?  I was curious.  About everything.  I wanted to know.  I wanted to understand.  And I especially wanted to understand MY role in this world.  My life.  Did it have meaning?  Well, maybe.  Maybe not.  

I wanted to understand other people.  What they did was always driven by why they wanted to do it.  What was that wanting?  That desire?

To be perfectly honest after 70 plus years of living and asking myself these questions, not just of others, but of myself, I have no answers.  Zero.  Zip.  Nada.

But I think it helps to stop and think before we act.  Think ahead to consequences.  Think about how our own actions will impact others.

Because we are not on this planet all by ourselves.  What we do, the decisions we make, the actions we initiate?  They will all, in one way or another, affect another person.  They can affect our environment.  On a micro level, our actions may only affect ourselves.  We think.  But there are realities beyond our own that will also be impacted.

So I find myself, from time to time, thinking.  I may have a very vague notion of what I want to know and my thoughts meander here, there, everywhere.  As I think, I gather more information.  I accept some ideas, reject others.  I gather more information.  Change my mind.  Adjust what I am planning on doing.  Examine the consequences of those decisions.  Gather more information.  Change my mind.  And continue my meandering in the corners and corridors of my own mind.  Long before I grab a paper and pencil, I may have already considered 10, 20, more, options until I have selected the ones that *might* give me a result I can be happy with.

Am I talking about life here, or weaving?

Yes.

Because my approach to weaving, creating a textile, is the exact same process I have used on my life choices since as far back as I can remember.

And believe me, I remember as a young child making some really awful choices.  And I remember the consequences of those choices and how badly I felt after being caught out.

Do the best you can until you know better.  When you know better, do better.

We make mistakes.  It's part of the growing process.  It is part of becoming an adult.  It is part of living.  Don't be afraid to make mistakes.  Acknowledge them.  Apologize to any who have been negatively impacted by them.  But an apology isn't enough.  What can you do to repair the damage you have done?

The only difference between life and weaving is that you have not harmed another person with your mistake.  You have simply not gotten the result you want.  You can begin again.  You can learn from your mistake and do it over again, this time with more knowledge.  And hopefully come closer to your desired results.

Personally I have been going through some difficult decision making.  The trip to Olds was in part an opportunity to see if it was feasible for me to continue to make the 11+ hour journey to Olds to continue to teach the program.

But I'm not in my 30s now.  I am hitting 72 in 3 weeks (approximately).  I came to weaving with physical injuries, and by careful monitoring of my physical effort I managed to keep my body weaving for 40+ years.  

In point of fact it isn't the weaving that I cannot do (although at a much reduced rate) but the other things associated with teaching.

In 2019 I made the very difficult decision to stop travelling long distances to teach, other than the Olds program.

This year has shown me that I must now let that go as well.  It is time for me to accept that the effort involved in collecting the equipment, teaching samples, etc., getting it all loaded up into the van, then driving approximately 500+  miles, standing up in front of a class for 5 days dumping information into brains like water from a firehose, then packing up and driving that 500+  miles home again...is no longer possible - IF I AM GOING TO BE ABLE TO CONTINUE TO TEACH IN OTHER WAYS.

The stress of dealing with the possibility of catching covid on the journey or while away from home was, quite frankly, huge.   We stopped only for gas/pee breaks, Doug grabbed food from fast food places and we ate in the car.  We did not eat in the dining hall or any of the local restaurants.  I brought a HEPA filter for the classroom and fortunately we had a room with a window we could open for ventilation.

And every single person in my class wore a mask to help protect me (and each other) just in case.  Very very few others wore masks and I hope to hell no one caught covid on campus or in the community or their journey there and home again.

But that's the thing.  You can't see a virus and you just don't know.  And it isn't over yet, nor will it be if people do not stop the spread of the virus.  We will continue to ride this deadly roller coaster as other viruses crop up and also spread.

My body told me loud and clear on day 4 that it could not, would not, do this again.  Not without making me pay for it.

So I am throwing my future efforts to teach behind/with the School of Sweet Georgia.  They have booked me for lectures (every second month - about two hours of information overload), plus they have asked me to create two more classes for them.  Now that I am home, the decks will be cleared and I will begin working on those.  I have 3 months to get them done, and work with their team to make the creation of them happen in a 3(?) day window where once again I will be facing a very long drive (9 hours) in order to get there.  

I am fortunate in that Doug is willing to do the driving and the heavy lifting.  But I have to accept that I am not immortal, and my body is broken and worn out after years of working hard plus injuries.  And the time comes to everyone to accept, adapt and adjust.  

When my mother was told that her end date was nigh, she looked at me and the doctor and said - I've had 90 years, 85 of them were good. I was more than a little astonished that she could look back on her life, with all the troubles and travails that she lived through and come to the conclusion that she had had A Good Life.  As I turn 72 next month, I can say that I have woven a life through weaving and it has mostly been good.  While I have some regrets, wish I had done some things differently, I think that the good outweighs the negative by a large measure.  And by taking steps now to accommodate my injured and worn out body, I will be able to continue to weave, to teach, to think.  

And that sounds pretty good to me right now, despite the sorrow I feel in what I have to let go.

Stay tuned for what comes next if you want to ride shotgun with me as I try to figure stuff out!

Road Trip

 

Heading east we saw the top of Mount Robson, which is usually covered in a cap of cloud.  

We made the journey in 11 hours, barely stopping along the way.  It was lovely to see the mountains again, but my body just doesn’t travel well and I knew I was facing a hectic week.  

And so it was.  Hectic.  Intense.  Pressured.  Firehose.  Lots of anxiety, but also?  Willingness to learn. To try.  To see what happened, when…

But I just don’t have the stamina anymore.  The only reason I was able to cope at all was because I had an assistant who jumped in and helped answer questions and assist the students.  And naps.  I took naps at lunch.  

Tomorrow is the final day so I decided to start packing up tonight.  With two helpers it didn’t take long.  There is still more but the bulk of it is ready to be loaded up tomorrow after class. It won’t take long to finish up and move out.  And return home Friday.  

And the students go home to tackle their homework.  

I have a busy week when I get home and then the focus will be on the next classes for the School of Sweet Georgia.  And keep weaving tea towels.  

Keep on keeping on.  

Road Trip

 

getting the kitchen stuff for the townhouse ready - cooking utensils, food, etc.  Yes, the stack of plastic bins is full of food and kitchen things

Class supplies and equipment - yes, everything in this photo except the loom and the spool rack is going into the back of the van

Getting ready to teach at Olds takes times and effort.  Quite a lot of effort.  

This year is especially difficult because of Covid.  So I have cut back on a bunch of things I would normally bring, and added in more equipment.  The less the students have to leave the classroom, the 'safer' it will be.  For me.  But also for them.

What isn't in the photo is the room air filter.  We are bringing our personal HEPA filter for the classroom.  I'm hoping to get a large classroom, but with a smaller class (9 as of last email from the college) I expect we will be in one of the smaller rooms.  However, the smaller rooms do have windows that can be opened so we plan on having windows open, door to hallway closed with the filter running 24/7.

In addition, there will be masks for anyone who wants one and we have accumulated some rapid tests if anyone wants to test.

Given my compromised immune system. we will eat in the van, not in a restaurant during the 11 hour drive.  If the weather is nice we can sit outside, but it looks like potential for rain.  At Olds we will not be eating in the dining hall or any of the local restaurants, so we have to make sure to bring cooking pots/pans, utensils, dishes and as much food as we can.  We have a couple of large cooler bags, and Doug will go to the grocery store for things like meat or fresh veggies.

I have my N94 mask which I will be wearing.  Given the lifting of most mitigations I may not feel safe enough to remove my mask - at all.  

Because people keep telling us that we must do our own risk assessment.  Given the close quarters with 10 other people (I have a volunteer teaching assistant), and many of them travelling long distances to get to Olds, I am leery of the students encountering covid during their journey and arriving with an unwelcome passenger.

I had hoped that by now we would be in a trough, but as of this morning the 'trough' was still too high for my comfort.

So this year at Olds is going to be extra stressful for me because I have to meet the needs of my students, but I also feel the need to keep me, AND them, safe as can be.

The good news yesterday was that my eye continues to heal, but isn't quite there yet.  It's been 5 months of aggressive treatment.  The last thing eye doc said to me was "Don't get worse!" and that she wants to see me again in 8 weeks.

However, she has cut back on my eye drops, which will make teaching a lot easier.  I can now schedule them for non-class times.  

Today Doug will finish packing up the dry goods and we will both work on our personal stuff.  He is picking up a couple of books on hold for me at the library and then I will pause the rest of my holds until we are home again.  I hope to get a lot of reading done on the trip.

Our house minder has the keys to the house and will take care of things while we are gone.  Doug has cut the lawn so it shouldn't need anything until we are back.  Our housing at Olds has been arranged and Doug has a stack of books to read, too.  Fortunately he can entertain himself because I am going to be BUSY and then too exhausted by the end of the day to do much of anything except veg.  I will bring the bin of hemming, just in case I feel able to at least do that.  

This year Olds will be bittersweet.  Sweet to teach.  Bitter at how stressed I feel given my compromised immune system and the risk of covid. 

OTOH, I have some nice things planned for the week after I get home - a friend asked if we could do a Zoom catch up (yes, please!) and a weaver has asked to talk to me about the business end of weaving (yes, of course), plus the guild is trying to get a social organized so we can discuss the future and how we can move forward with events for the members, given the continuing presence of covid.

Living with covid means protecting our vulnerable members, not tossing all mitigations to the wind and telling everyone to just 'get over it'.  

Currently reading Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt.  This is her first published novel, the first of many, I hope.