BIG NEWS!

For those who have not yet heard, December 18 is the big day!

Preparing for Winter

Last Saturday my neighbour Doug and his son Ken helped me pick up half a cord of firewood from Randy in town. It had been raining so the wood was wet, but we stacked in in a spot where it gets some sun and wind, and it dried our quite a bit in that gale we had on Sunday.


It was stacked nice and tight. There's some fine hardwood in there, maple, beech and oak, with a bit of birch. It's chopped just the right size for burning too.

Before we start burning, the chimney still has to be inspected. Ideally we'd like to get a cast iron stove with a rear vent, so we can send the stovepipe up the chimney. We'll need the advice of an expert before we can do that. Failing that, we'll just use the fireplace. While it won't be particularly efficient, the romance factor will be considerable. In the worst case the chimney will be in need of major repair, and we'll depend on the electric heating for the rest of the winter.

Cherhill, Alberta

The old homestead near Cherhill, ca. 1950. My earliest memory is from the little house at left. I was walking from the sitting room into the kitchen. My grandmother's Singer sewing machine towered over me to the right. Just beyond it was a window full of golden sunlight. I guess I was about 3 years old.

Tsarist Officers in Kars

Tsarist officers in Kars, northeast Turkey, April 3, 1910. My grandfather is sitting at left, sword in hand. It seemed appropriate to post this picture as I am reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow, a novel about a poet who arrives in Kars after 12 years in Germany, to be confronted by the backwardness of the growing Islamist movement as well as the right wing secular nationalists. Kars was much more cosmopolitan in my grandfather's day, containing a rich mix of Russians, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, Turks, Azerbaijanis, and Turkmens. (Photo: S. Grammatikopulo, Kars)

The Silence of the Snow

It's Sunday, October 22nd.


Louise has gone to sunny California.


I am left behind, all alone.


The day after she left...


in a bleak but beautiful expression of pathetic fallacy...


... it snowed.

Guadeloupe Getaway

Please bare with me. This is a test.

In Memoriam

Brat Stanisław

Zakonnik Zgromadzenia Braci Szkół Chrześcijańskich

Brat Stanisław Romuald Rybicki jest legendą Zgromadzenia Braci Szkół Chrześcijańskich, tzw. Braci Szkolnych. Ze zgromadzeniem przy ul. Pułaskiego brat profesor był od ponad 75 lat. Był w przeszłości prowincjałem zakonu, wykładowcą wyższych seminariów duchownych, wielu pamięta go jako nauczyciela polonistę w Niższym Seminarium Duchownym w Częstochowie i szkole sióstr Zmartwychwstanek. Zapisał się niezmiernie sympatycznie w pamięci wielu mieszkańców.

Face to Face in Pacific

Between 11-15 September I was in BC to attend a regional directors' meeting. Before the meeting I visited a few of our sites in Vancouver and on the Island, and later headed for Harrison Lake. On the wayI visited the Chehalis River Hatchery and took this picture of some trout.

Summer was over, so it was fairly quiet at the Harrison Hot Springs Resort and Spa. The other groups meeting there were a nurses' association and sales staff from a national chain of linen shops. There were a few pensioners too, and some obligatory Japanese tourists.


Harrison Lake, BC.


Harrison Hot Springs Resort and Spa.

Benedictine Monastery, Mission, BC

When our directors' meeting was over, Sylvain drove Alex to Langley and me to White Rock. On the way we stopped at Westminster Abbey, the Benedictine Monastery in Mission.


Gardens of the abbey.

"In order for man to be fully aware of what he is choosing, he must also be fully aware of what he is renouncing."


The abbey and monastery were built between 1951 and 1982. In the abbey the water fountain contained a piece of stone from the Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino.


Interior of the abbey.

Reflections at Summer's End

Evening clouds.

Morning - exterior.

Morning - interior.

Beautiful and poisonous, the Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria.

The Honey Mushroom, Amarilaria mellea.

These guys remind me of the Chinese Dance in Disney's Fantasia, based on one of the six dances in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.

Mature Armillariae melleae.

Although there was a frost overnight from Friday to Saturday (28-29 Sept.), I went out to see if any more mushrooms were to be found. What a surprise! The mushroom known variously as Leccinum aurantiacum, Red-capped scaber stalk, or Orange-capped bolete, which had evaded me for most of the summer, now appeared in numbers.



We took another walk through the forest on Sunday, to see if I had missed any or if others had grown overnight. What a thrill it was to find even more of those virile little wonders than the day before. At first we found only one or two, but after invoking the fertility gods we came across more and more, until they appeared in hordes.

32 on Sunday, combined with 30 on Saturday, makes 62 perfect little Boletaceae