big city

 

I am heading to the big city for the next couple of days to do my grandparental duties. I am beginning to know every gymnasium and every soccer pitch in Halifax and loving every minute of it.

Halifax

I'm in Halifax over night, but I have no way of posting photos. So here's one of Paul McCartney who is also here, or at least he was last evening. He gave a 3 hour concert and sang 37 songs. Everyone was thrilled. So far they haven't noticed me yet.

tower

Humans build towers. Given a few blocks a child will build a tower. When bored I have stacked creamers. We built the Tower of Babel and we haven't stopped yet. We build towers and then think of some reason to justify it. Halifax has a tower - the reason: to celebrate the beginnings of democracy in Nova Scotia, I think. And of course we had to climb it. That what you do with towers.

freeloaders

These freeloaders, being fed by grandchildren,spend their days on the Frog Pond at a Halifax park on the North West Arm: The Sir Stanford Fleming Park. Surely you know who he is. You can't quite remember. How about http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/ref/Sandford.html
There, now you know.

to market

To market, to market, jiggedy jig ... This is the Saturday Halifax Market. They are going to move it down to one of the piers on the docks, but now it is in an old brewery, up and down and in all the rooms. It's an absolute delight. I only took a couple of pictures outside. In one section the wineries and distillery have tasting. I went away with a bottle. I always yield to temptation.

wet

Yesterday I drove through heavy rain and then fog and then more rain to Halifax. I parked the car. Beside the street were these lovely columbines. This had been a shady patch of weedy grass between the sidewalk and the street. Now it is a place of delight for eveyone who comes by. I witnessed the planting a couple of years ago, but I never dreamt that it would be such a transformation.

university halls

When I was at the soccer practice with the boys, I turned around and took this picture of the halls of academe. In this case it is Dalhousie, one of several universities in Halifax. I love Halifax, the old gray dowager queen of the Atlantic. It is big enough to be vibrant, and small enough to be intimate.

breakfast conversation

We were having this conversation over breakfast and my grandson asked me if I was going to put it on the blog. So here it is. What do you call this piece of furniture? It appears that "chesterfield" is an only-in-Canada word. Who knew ..and wait for it. The anagram of my name is "the jury drip" while their father is, "asexual coy nerd". And I am like the dog with freckled hands (paws) and brown eyes. Conversations with nine and seven year olds are filled with surprises.

North West Arm

I was in Halifax for a seminar at one of the universities yesterday. I took this just before going inside for the class. This is right in the city. I just love Halifax. it has so much to offer, so much to do, and such a pleasant place for doing it.

snow

This was the storm yesterday morning when my grandchild went out to try her new snow suit before breakfast. The storm meant that I spent extra time with my family and shared a super Vietnamese supper last evening. I left Halifax in sunshine this morning. I drove north. Just after Truro the snow came on like a curtain and it was second gear all the way through the Pass, except for the time spent shovelling out of a snow bank. When I reached Oxford the sun was shining again. This was taken at the Oxford petrol (gas) station.



My confidence about driving to and from my home in Hampton, Nova Scotia, this winter has been severely eroded.

snowed in

I'm stuck in Halifax. They closed the road to New Brunswick. Snow has closed the pass and it seems that they have reduced plow operations until sometime in December. Go figure. I took pictures of the snow this morning, but I don't have the cable to download them. I should have reached nearly home by now - but I'll spend another night and check the road conditions in the morning.

This photo was taken on Tuesday: four days ago before winter arrived.

fancy hopscotch

Eileen had set herself up to draw "fancy hopscotches" Her mittens and the chalk box are under the umbrella. This is Halifax in the the 9th of March.
I arrived in the city and was greeted by this little endeavour. Of course, I had to try out the hopscotch. I have not lost my touch at all. Eileen is my youngest grandchild and the first girl, and so she is very special.

farmer's market

Yesterday we went to the Farmer’s Market. The market is held in an old brewery, a heritage building, and it happens on many levels in all the rooms. It is overflowing. I wanted to be there once before I left, because next year they will be in larger quarters out on a pier in a new state-of-the-art ecological building. I just wanted to be there with the colour and the people and the smells. I hope to return to this city to live, and then I shall be at the market every Saturday morning. By then it will be in the new building, and it shall have its own ambiance. I needed to say goodbye to the old. They have a farmer's market in Timmins. I went once and and was so disappointed that I never returned. But the places simply cannot be compared and soon I will return to Timmins and enjoy the other experiences that it has to offer.

enough whimpering

Enough whimpering: a new life awaits. I am in that stage when I am putting pieces of the puzzle together. I am stubborn, or I am fearful, which is it? I ignore the warning signs and stay in a relationship or a job until its bitter end. Praying to a god to fix things up, for healing, has only prolonged the process. That has been a major insight; that my faith has keep me in abusive relationships. Well, no more, 63 years may be a bit old to start out on a new path of being alone and becoming my own person, but I’ve taken the first step, and I’m going to do it.
A dear friend came into Halifax yesterday evening. We walked over to an Ethiopian restaurant and had a very different, but very good meal. There are no utensils, just a flat crepe like bread to use to pickup the food. We dipped in and enjoyed. Each time I meet up with people from my past, they help me to see with greater clarity, now, that the fog has lifted and I am moving on.

the explosion

The Halifax Explosion
We were looking up into the trees that line the street. They are immense, but how old are they? We thought that they might have been planted when the houses were built, but how long ago was that? The previous owners said that this house was about 80 years old, but the roofers thought that it was more about 100. If so, it must have escaped the explosion.
The Halifax Explosion in 1917 leveled much of the city, but this street must have been spared. Then yesterday we saw a map of the devastation. It covered all this section of the city up to two blocks from here. These houses would have lost their windows and the young trees would have been stripped, but here we are living in the ever after.
My life has experienced a horrifying explosion, and while my windows may have been blown away and the leaves stripped from my branches, while I am wounded and bleeding, my life is going on, and I am learning to dance again.

In the Elms

I've been taking pictures, but it seems that to download I need the disk that I left at "home" in Northern Ontario, so when I return "home" in three weeks, I'll add the photos.

I'm sitting in a little house on a tree-lined Halifax Street. It has been raining for days. In my little second floor bedroom I can almost lie in the great branches of the elms just outside. The rain provides the music, and the leaves are larger and greener each day. The trees embrace me.

I used to relate to the great white pines of our northern forest, but now the leafy trees are croning their song to me of new life, of life cycles and hope for another day. I am here in Halifax learning to dance again, a new dance, moving away from my place on the shore with its good and bitter memories and looking into new possibilities. I now have a temporary, moving-on, position in Northern Ontario, but now I know that I must return here to the ocean and the province where I was conceived but not born into, but which has always called me home.

just starting out

I have just started and created a blog. I am just starting and creating a life. A relationship of twelve years, that I thought was for a lifetime, has come crashing down and with it goes my home on the ocean shore, my gardens and the hospitality business that took so long to create. Now that is over and done with and I begin again. This beginning is reabsorbing me into the realm of a transcendent god, rather than the Mister Fix-It Deity that I professionally serve in my position as a "minister of the gospel". In the midst of all these changes I begin to write.

It is an appropriate beginning - a rainy Monday morning in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. I am spending time with my son, his wife and two grandchildren. I am doing the usual things, reading, playing checkers, buying treats and reconnecting. Reconnecting must be the word. I am reconnecting with living and no one can just live, we've got to dance.

I cannot start again from nothing. I bring everything I was and am to the dance floor, but then some of the burdens need to be jettisoned inorder that I might be able to freely move again. A sacred dance moves through the interconnectedness of all things. If it takes me beyond Christianity, then I must go, but my words and memories are western and Christian and are in the process of being redefined.