I saved the last dance for me.

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Dear Vi,

I’ve been feeling kinda blue lately, so to remind myself of what I’m capable of, I thought I’d do a little time travel today. Because, you know, some things are too good to be forgotten.

In 2011 I choreographed and performed in my final show. I wanted to showcase the two things I loved doing the most in the world…playing in The Big Band, and bellydance.

And so Rockin’ the Casbah was born. Saba Middle Eastern Dance Ensemble together with The Big Band, all on stage together in a blend of traditional and very contemporary bellydance. My husband, the love of my life, was the band leader, I was blessed to have vocalist Fawn Fritzen perform in two numbers with my dancers, and my dear friend Doug Rutherford did a marvelous job as MC. And my dancers! Oh, my, the dancers! It was my last show, and it couldn’t have been more perfect.

The clip above is video of the Grand Finale of Rockin’ the Casbah: the very last time I performed…my very last minute, in fact. It makes me feel good to watch this.

My stage may have changed, but I’m still out here!

What stage do you dance on?

It was hard to stay in touch

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Dear Vi,

Obviously I haven’t been around for a bit!

It was hard staying in touch with you while we were in Dawson City last summer because I had even less access to wifi than I did the year before. So blogging was …difficult.

Since we got back last fall, I’ve been hunkered down: dealing with health, struggling with some big questions & working things out in my mind, doing lots of writing, doing lots of critiquing, a little quilting. I’ve pretty much been keeping to myself here in my little corner of the world.

I’ll catch you up on all that really soon.

Tippy Canoe and Broccoli, Too

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Dear Vi,

I thought you might like to hear a bit of what I’ve been doing.In case you can’t tell from the picture, I planted a garden!Actually, I created a garden completely from scratch.I purchased bags of soil, plants, and seeds when we passed through Whitehorse last May………and when we got here I scrounged some old cement forms to hold the dirt.My neighbor Sally very generously let me shovel out several buckets of dirt from her dirt stash to supplement what I brought with me.Yes, people in Dawson City have dirt stashes. And least you think otherwise, I’d like to inform you that romance is alive and well up here – her boyfriend bought Sally a pile of dirt for her birthday one year. And also in case you’re wondering, yes, it was the perfect gift. I’ve been sharing salad greens and produce which is really cool, considering.Everyone has been enjoying the greenery. Amazing, who knew you could grow a kitty cat in only 4 inches of dirt?And of course there are flowers……how could there not be flowers?How’s your garden growing?

ps you’ll need to excuse any typos…I’m posting on my phone!

The Weather Outside: Frightful and Delightful

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Dear Vi,

While my friends on the west coast are enjoying a bit of a cool and rainy summer, here in Dawson City, Yukon things have been quite delightful. Well, for the most part, anyway.We did go through a couple of weeks of being choked by smoke from forest fires, but thankfully no longer. Now we are enjoying cool mornings, blazing hot afternoons, and evening thunderstorms.There’s something shivery and delightful about being cozy inside while the storm rages at your door. Especially when you’re living in a tin can (er…travel trailer) as we are.Thunderstorms also make for great photography.Unfortunately, they also make more forest fires.Have you enjoyed a good crack and boom thunderstorm lately?

A Stearman Biplane in Dawson City, Yukon

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Dear Vi,

I believe I have not yet told you what brought Kelly and I to Dawson City last summer…and what brought us back again this year.

This is it – a vintage Stearman biplane. She’s a beauty, eh? Kelly was hired to ferry her from Ontario to Dawson last summer.

It was a long trip because the airplane has a very short range.

Also, the it’s an endurance test for the pilot. The trip was done in 33 legs, 44 hours flying in total. He averaged two legs per day, if that helps put it into perspective.

A ground crew followed along below, with extra avgas in the back. She does like to guzzle the gasoline.

This particular craft was manufactured in 1942 as a WWII trainer.

 

She was given a paint job over the winter. Now she shines in the Great River Air colours of blue and cream.

At long last, Kelly has landed his dream summer job…giving rides in a vintage biplane in the skies over Dawson City.

 

 

Back in Dawson City

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Dear Vi,

We’ve been back in Dawson City for just over a week, and I’ll tell ya, it feels good.

This morning as I was walking Samson on the trail beside the highway, his inspection of a clump of grass was interrupted by the sound of an ATV approaching from behind. We stepped to the side as a child rode past. Miniature vehicle, tiny helmet, pink Disney princess backpack bouncing between her shoulder blades. Because someone has taught her good off-road manners, she slowed as she passed. Two eyes on the road, two hands on the handlebars, focussed and full of the responsibility she’d been given.

Dawson City is a place where elementary school kids can drive their own selves to town.

Dawson City is also a place where the young men who serve you in the restaurant are as likely to wear skinny pants and man-buns as not. They’re in Dawson for the summer, earning their university money or else some extra credit in the school of life experience. One or two have beads and strips of leather braided into their long beards.

The other young men you’ll see are wearing ball caps and driving big trucks, loaders, and backhoes. Or flying helicopters or bush planes, or driving flat-bottomed boats into town from Moosehide or West Dawson.

Well, so are the old men, for that matter.

They all gather together in the bars after hours to slouch in their chairs, fingers tapping the tops of beer bottles, laughing out of wide mouths and red faces, legs spread, the fronts of their bodies concave because they’re sitting in the shape of the letter C.

The dance teacher in me wants to tell them to sit up straight.

When you look at these young men, you understand how the old men got that way.

Dawson City is a place where a beer costs only six bucks on tap, but a pound of butter costs eight. And a pound of bacon? Thirteen-fifty.

Hey there, Dawson City. It’s good to be back. I missed you.

Book Review: The Overdue Life of Amy Byler, by Kelly Harms

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Dear Vi,

Summer reading season is upon us and I am all about the lighthearted, happy books right now.

Why? Because lately I’m finding all the unkindness in the world is wearing me down. Angst and anger shouts at me every time I look at social media, and sometimes it’s hard to get it out of my head. Seriously, sometimes it wakes me up in the night.

So all that disturbing soul-stealing stuff we’re surrounded with?  I don’t want any of it in the novels I read right now. No thank you, I want to be transported away from all of that this summer.

I want to live in Amy Byler’s world for a couple of weeks.

Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City. Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps.

This book fits the bill if you’re looking for a light summer read. It’s women’s fiction sharing the front porch swing with chick-lit… without all that annoying pattering talk that chick-lit usually comes with. It’s intelligent chick-lit. (Is this a category? It should be.)

Kelly Harms has written a character with depth. Amy Byler is an intelligent woman; a school librarian (yay!) who is besieged with doubts over being away from her kids for an entire summer. She’s given the unexpected gift of a “momspringa” – a summer of discovering another side of herself. What does she do with it? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out – I’m not gonna spoil it for you.

Sure the book has the expected tropes – fairy-tale romance, complete wardrobe makeover, insights into what’s really important in life. Of course it does! It’s supposed to! But it’s also got great conversations about things like library science and getting kids to read. And wine! That’s what makes it a great summer read.

I didn’t want War & Peace, folks… I wanted a well-written, intelligent woman rediscovering herself, and that’s what I got.

I received this book as an Advance Reading Copy. My opinions are strictly my own.

What’s on your summer reading list? Are you feeling the need to de-stress with a lighthearted novel, too? Let me know and we’ll compare notes.

Tulips and other Small Things that bring Joy

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Dear Vi,

Yesterday was the official first day of spring.  The sun has crossed the celestial equator, moving northward.

I celebrated the Vernal Equinox by going outside to inspect my flower beds. Were my tulips poking green tips up through the chilly dirt yet? Yes! Yes, they were.  Small, green tips about an inch high, full of promise.

I can’t begin to say how happy that made me. Even though we’ve had a pretty good winter (by my standards, anyway), I still felt a burst of joy at the first sign of the flowers the deer find such a delicacy each spring. I am crossing my fingers they forget to check the edges of my driveway this year.

Tulips confirmed, I came inside, made a cup of tea, and tidied my sewing room. As I ran a damp dusting cloth over newly cleared surfaces, I appreciated all the things I love about this space: the way the lace curtain hangs to the side of the glass door leading out to the deck, my shelves with their bins of colourful scraps, the sampler blocks I found while tidying and impulsively arranged on the design wall, Samson watching me from his pillow in the corner, the sight of Bastion Mountain rising up into the sky, stone grey and green against the blue sky right outside my window.

Here, I’ll hold my camera up to the glass and show you:

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that bring the most joy.

What small things bring you joy?

On joining a book club and being surrounded by life experience

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Dear Vi,

Last October I was invited into a book club by my friend Jean.

Call me a nerd, but I have always wanted to be in a book club!

It was a little intimidating at first, to tell the truth. I mean, this is a super-educated, well-traveled, well-read, well-spoken circle of impressive critical thinkers who can also cook like nobody’s business. They meet each month at a different member’s house, and you should see the spread each month’s hostess puts on! OMG seriously delicious…I could belong to this group just for the wine and “lunch.”

I am the youngest at 57. Our eldest member hosts 90 years with grace and a keen wit. I want to be just like her some day.

…Also, this is a long standing group of friends who have been reading together for decades. Yes, you read that right. Decades. (Did I say I felt a little intimidated? Yeah.)

And they have welcomed me. Which blows me away. I can’t even…

I’ve read four books with them so far: The Golden Age by Joan London; Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto; The Alice Network by Kate Quinn; and The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman. This month they are reading Finding Gobi by Dion Leonard. Quite the eclectic selection!

It is really interesting hearing their opinions, and especially–especially!– soaking up the stories they tell around each novel’s topic. For example, when discussing The Golden Age, the group reminisced about Polio. Uh huh. Reminisced. And after reading Forgiveness, they told their own stories about friends and acquaintances (of Japanese descent) who had been forced into internment camps during the Second World War.

Here’s the thing: I have lived most of my adult life surrounded by people my age or younger. It wasn’t until we moved to Salmon Arm that I had the opportunity to spend much time with the generation one up from mine, to listen to first-hand stories on subjects that are, well…historical from my perspective.

I feel the same about the quilters guild that I belong to, where eight members are turning 80 this year, and one will celebrate 100 years in April.

Being part of these two groups is like being surrounded by a room of older sisters, aunts, and even a grandmother or two. And the laughter! Let me tell you, these ladies like to laugh.

Seriously, if the collective life experience of these women could be transmogrified into electricity, it would power a small city.

Do you have the opportunity to participate in an activity with a diverse group of people including those a generation older than you?

And do you belong to a book club? If you don’t and you’d like to, ask at your public library. I’ll bet they can point you in the right direction.

Read on!

Good Bye, Dawson City (until next year)

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Dear Vi,

Our Yukon summer sojourn is over. We drove away from Dawson City two days ago.

Tomorrow will see the Yukon behind us for another winter.

I took a lot of walks, saw two parades, read a lot of books, made my 60,000 word goal on the next novel, made some new friends, and learned some interesting things this summer. And I still haven’t told you what brought us up here in the first place.

It would be so easy to stay and make a home here…so easy to knit myself into the community.

We’ll be back next summer, for four months this time. Four!I’ve got some planning to do! Maybe I’ll teach a dance class, see if any local writers want to get together, join the fitness club, make a quilt by hand, start another novel…

Life is grand and full of possibilities!

Autumn Knitting

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Dear Vi,

Well, the frost is on the pumpkin here, and our time in Dawson is nearly done. There are so many things I haven’t shown you yet! This is my view out the front window: a dredge pond surrounded by tailings piles left by the dredges sometime in the early 1900s. The rocks make a great background to show you the knitting projects that have kept me busy. We will be loading up the camper and heading south sometime next week. I had hoped to have this sweater finished and a good start on a second one by summer’s end, but my ambition exceeded my capacity. Kelly has one last big trip to fly this weekend, and I will tell you all about it when he gets back. Today I’m off to town in search of warmer clothing. Autumn comes early this far north. I hope you’re keeping warm, too!

The Streets of Dawson City

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Dear Vi,You might have heard that the streets of Dawson City are paved with gold,but the truth is, they aren’t paved at all.Here’s evidence: boot brushes outside the door of every establishment.And miles of boardwalk.This summer has been a writing retreat for me. I left home with a sketchy idea for my next novel, and today I’m well over halfway there. I’m writing about 1,000 words every time I sit down, which has been about 5 days per week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. When I’m not writing, I’m reading All The Books, which is so incredibly delicious – a summer of unlimited time.

And I’ve been accompanying Sam on his walks, of course. We love to walk up and down the streets, the boardwalk sometimes booming under our feet, sometimes squeaking , often soft with age.

I brought quilting projects and everything I need to sew a blouse, but haven’t taken my sewing machine out even once. And that’s just fine. It’s okay to stop once in awhile to wade in the water and smell the grass.

Don’t you agree?