Trees are blossoming
with the glorious promise
of summertime fruit
(c) Shawn Bird
sheltering the world May 13, 2011
Last August, a pair of British cyclists wheeled into town on a tandem bike to promote the Shelter Box program. We were the 400 mile mark on a tour that was to take Huw and Carolyn Thomas 10,000 miles around the world.
Shelter Box is an international humanitarian organization that stock piles green boxes about the size of a child’s school desk. Inside each box there are supplies for a family of ten to live following a disaster. The box is packed tight with items like a 10 person tent, blankets, school supplies, water purification and cooking utensils. The boxes are stored at strategic sites in the various continents so that they will be ready to deploy at a moment’s notice when a disaster strikes.
Since Huw and Carolyn left us, they have travelled through Western Canada and across the US. They flew home to England for Christmas and then flew to New Zealand for the next leg. They were there when Shelter Box was called upon to aid victims of the earthquake in Christchurch. Then they cycled through flood ravished Australia, seeing the boxes put to use there as well. Currently ShelterBox is deployed in Japan following the earthquake and in Colombia following floods.
Now Huw and Carolyn are in Europe and have passed the 8000 mile mark as they entered Holland this week. Their efforts to raise awareness of the ShelterBox organization has resulted in many individuals and organizations around the world sponsoring a $1000 box. Three of those boxes come from Salmon Arm, so if you are looking at photos of some disaster and see a logo for Rotary Clubs of Salmon Arm on a tent, you’ll know where our contributions ended up.
Visit Huw and Carolyn’s blog about their adventure at http://tandem10.wordpress.com
Canzionere 36 May 12, 2011
How’s your Italian?
36
S’io credesse per morte essere scarco
del pensiero amoroso che m’atterra,
colle mie mani avrei già posto in terra
queste mie membra noiose, et quello incarco;
ma perch’io temo che sarrebbe un varco
di pianto in pianto, et d’una in altra guerra,
di qua dal passo anchor che mi si serra
mezzo rimango, lasso, et mezzo il varco.
Tempo ben fôra omai d’avere spinto
l’ultimo stral la dispietata corda
ne l’altrui sangue già bagnato et tinto;
et io ne prego Amore, et quella sorda
che mi lassò de’ suoi color’ depinto,
et di chiamarmi a sé non le ricorda
Poor Petrarch. In this sonnet he is wishing he could free himself from the obsession of his love, but he thinks that death would just put him into another war, from one grief to another. He begs Love, who has painted him with color, but doesn’t remember to come when he calls her. ..
Poor desperately obsessed Petrarch. Of course, even death was not an escape. He still suffered for another thirty years after Laure died. It wasn’t until the last decade of his life that his writings suggest he was released and could focus on worship of God and not his muse.
I played with a multi-colour pencil crayon and my calligraphy pens to transcribe this sonnet today. Here is the result:
Canzionere 36 da Petrarca
I think that when I take the time to set this up for a good copy, with copy lines and borders, it will be quite effective. I particularly like my Italian pseudonym Giovanna Uccello. 😉 it’s fun having an easily transliterated name… Jeanne Oiseau. I mean, Shawn Bird.
refrain to re-train May 11, 2011
Don’t explain a gain.
Re-train the brain.
Retain the refrain in the brain:
ABSTAIN!
sweetheart May 10, 2011
True story.
Names hidden to protect the guilty.
Husband to wife, as he cuts a slice of homemade carrot, banana, pineapple cake with whipped lemon buttercream icing: “Are you fighting the urge for sweet things lately?”
.
Wife, who has lost almost 30 lbs in the last year: “No. I’m not fighting…”
voices in the wilderness May 9, 2011
During the Canadian election, I was approached by a representative of CanWest to submit blogs for their Election Issues coverage on www.canada.com Two of my blogs were submitted, and both were selected. I considered it a serious honour to be invited to participate and to lend my words to those of other Canadians discussing issues on their minds. Since my blog address was published, presumeably exposure in this national forum would increase blog traffic and I would be able to enjoy the prestige of having my words in such a professional milieu.
http://www.canada.com/Voting+exercise+hope/4709973/story.html is a May 2 reprint of https://shawnbird.com/2011/04/27/young-voices/
http://www.canada.com/hard+respect+Commons/4677890/story.html is a April 25 reprint of https://shawnbird.com/2011/04/20/responsible-government/
Having permitted them to reprint my words, I was surprised to notice at the bottom of my reprinted piece (c) Postmedia News. Huh? Nowhere in our correspondence did they ask for nor did I give them copyright. I gave them reprint permission. Interesting, isn’t it? If some text book or magazine wants to reprint it, will they be paying Postmedia News or will they be coming to me, the author and legitimate copyright holder of the work? What would it cost me to fight it?
There is an issue among professional writers with respect to news agencies using nonprofessional, unpaid writers who work for the glory of seeing their byline. It’s pretty cool, but an unpaid byline doesn’t put bread on the table of anyone’s family, except perhaps the publisher who’s enjoying the free labour. On the other hand, how does one earn a professional reputation except through giving some words away? It’s a bit of a tightrope, to be sure.
According to the shawnbird.com site stats, although there was a bit of a spike on April 26 and 27th, there was no increase in traffic after the May 2 article was posted on canada.com which suggests that the exposure didn’t generate the potential blog traffic. None the less, it was entertaining reading the comments from readers who would not normally have been exposed to my blog, and it was a thrill to see my words in a national forum. Perhaps there will be some name recognition in the future. I’m not really counting on it, though. We Canadian artistes know that with too much free exposure you can freeze to death, after all.
easy infamy May 7, 2011
I’m not sure that I can adequately describe the rush of joy and connection that happens when one has been hunting down the family tree, and finally finds them. There they are, all the members of the household listed chronologically perhaps a cousin staying, perhaps a couple missing. Using the census for genealogy is a fascinating and instructive tool. One travels back by decades: where are the kids now? who’s living near the grandparents? what happened to that lost brother? Most of these people were dead before I was born, but they are my family. They are my link to the past. I want to know about their lives. Seeing their names on the census, reading their address and professions makes them real in a completely different way.
I traced my father’s maternal line back 5 generations using the census, discovering siblings and cousins we didn’t know about. We had mysteries in the paternal line. As a baby grandpa lived alone with his mother. Was his father still in London? Why doesn’t he show up on any census (or death record). Look! At 21 Grandpa had a wife (Oh! The birth index shows they had 3 little kids in the next couple of years!) But 2 years later he was in Canada marrying my grandmother and she ended up with 3 kids. What happened there? Oh! He shows up in California on the 1931 US census with another woman! Wow. Grandpa really got around. We wouldn’t know him at all, would have no ideas about these important parts of his life without the census. He hadn’t admitted them in life, but it was important for the family to understand who he was. He had a pattern. It helped understand the sense of loss of childhood abandonment, and it told us that there were 3 other little kids back in England who felt a similar abandonment. These were important connections.
At the moment the Canadian census is being compiled, and they ask you an important question at the very end. Do you want this information available to future generations in 92 years? Choose yes. The joy you will provide the great, great, great grandchildren when they see your names and your mundane information is far more profound than you can conceive. It’s easy to speak to the future, just check the affirmative box.
love at any age May 6, 2011
I wrote last week that voting is an exercise in hope, but it’s certainly not the only one. Here’s a couple who demonstrate a great deal of hope in the future. I especially like the pastor’s theme, “You’re not done living ’til you’re dead.”
.
.
Congratulations Rose and Forrest.
♥ ♥ ♥
You were patient Forrest and you got a beautiful bride!
Here’s a tune just for you:
.
ancient texts May 5, 2011
Francesco Petrarca loved old texts. He travelled throughout Europe gathering the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. He’d hire copyists, or he’d copy them out himself. At his death, he had the largest library in Christendom.
There is a famous historical biography of Petrarca written by Abbé de Sade in the 18th century. It is quoted liberally in the exhibits at the Musée Petrarque at Fontaine de Vaucluse, so I asked the curator whether they had an English translation. They did not and she didn’t know whether there ever had been. However, by the time we got back to our apartment in Avignon, there was an email from her. She’d double checked with the museum’s librarian. There had been a translation made in 1776 in England by Susannah Dobson. I laughed at that. What were the chances I’d ever see a two hundred year old book?
The concept was absurd, but of course I looked on the internet, and shock of shocks there was a 2 volume set listed on eBay…
Now that same two volume set is sitting in my kitchen. Two beautiful books. Two leather bound books that came off the press in 1776.
1776.
That’s 235 years ago. Thats 133 years older than the city I live in.
I feel so remarkably awed to have these books in my possession. Petrarch collected ancient books, and I have collected ancient books about him.
I guess ideally I’d speak fluent Italian and Latin, and I’d be able to read all Petrarch’s own words whichever language he’d used, but unfortunately I can’t, so I have to rely on translations. Since I can’t find any copies of Abbé de Sade’s Memoires sur la Vie de François Pétrarque listed on the internet, Susannah Dobson’s translation will do for now.
PS. The provanance of the books is interesting as well. They have book plates in them:
Sir John Mordaunt was a rather famous military man in his time, and now his books are at my house. Wild. He lived in Walton Hall in Warwickshire (as you can see on his book plate). These books used to sit on the library shelves in Walton Hall. The house was rebuilt in the 19th century. Presumeably these books were in the Mordaunt library until the home was sold to become a girls’ school in the last century. Imagine. My books used to live in this house. Crazy, eh?
Oh- and there’s a Harry Potter connection as well, since in the 15th century Walton Hall was the home of the Lestrange family… 😉
Shawn L. Bird 
school lunch May 15, 2011
Tags: Chicago, Finland, postaday2011, school lunch
Topic #112: Should schools control what kids eat for lunch?
When I see the amount of garbage left after kids’ lunches with all the small packages of crackers, cheese, fruit rollups, cookies, etc. I am inclined to think there are a lot better ways to do this whole ‘school lunch’ thing. Ways that are healthier for kids, and better for the environment as well.
When I was an exchange student in Finland, I was particularly impressed at how lunches were provided. We sat at a couple of different seatings depending on our schedule. One entré was provided with a variety of milks (skim, 2%, homogenized, and buttermilk) plus rye bread slices, fruits and vegetables. The meals were fine, made up traditional Finnish foods. Potatoes, meats, soups, stews. They weren’t horrible, they weren’t great. To be honest, I have very little memory of what the school lunches were, except that I know they occasionally served maksalaatiko (liver casserole) a dish I loathed, so when it was on the menu and Langinkoski Rotary met, I would go there for lunch! As well, I remember the day that they served blood pancakes, because the whole lunch room turned to watch me attempt to eat them… (I couldn’t do it. I only managed one bite). There was very little packaging waste involved in these meals, and the garbage was mostly compostable left overs. It was companionable dining with friends in the bright lunch room.
The word ‘control’ in this prompt is interesting. It has to do with the Chicago school district that is banning junk food. This is old news around here in BC. Already pop and fried foods have been removed from all our school cafeterias and vending machines. Healthy options replace them and no one seems to miss them. Many of our schools are on a healthy snack program that delivers fruits and vegetables to the schools every month. Kids get BC produce like pears, baby cukes, grape tomatoes, and apples. We distribute them in our classes, and kids munch away while they read or work. The baked French fries taste just the same as the deep fried ones. Who knew? Canadians don’t tend to object to legislating lifestyle, which tends to make Americans bristle a bit.
I don’t like to see that so few of my students actually bring lunch. The girls in particular are apt to go without, and when queried will say that ‘they’re not hungry.’ Most of them as 12 and 13 year old are already afraid of getting fat from eating too much. However, on days when we have hot lunch brought in, most of them eat eagerly, so I am inclined to think that if every school had a lunch room and served a healthy hot lunch each day, the kids would enjoy it.
I’m all for adopting the Finnish model, and training our kids for a lifetime of healthy eating.
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