Sunday, April 24, 2011

All Wired Up – Wrapped and Coiled

Although my husband has spent his career as a journalist and newspaper editor he has recently become very interested in creative arts. While acknowledging and being impressed by his skill, I’d like to think this might be partly my influence.

During the past couple of years he has taken art classes with Joe Collins at McKenzie College, producing some still-life paintings of pears and apples and couple of beautiful landscapes of one of our favourite places in Maine.

Knowing of his interest in wire jewellery I was excited to see a short course offered at New Brunswick Community College – and found the ideal birthday present, and a new creative outlet.  The evenings spent there were not only relaxing for him but produced several lovely gifts for me as well. With our birthdays only a couple of weeks apart, it was a one-for-two inspiration.

From his work, in just six hours, I received two pairs of dangly silver earrings, a Celtic-style copper ring with a blue-green stone, a wire-wrapped blue stone pendant with an intricately coiled clasp and a second pendant of interwoven cobalt blue wire rings circling an iridescent bead.

Over the years I’ve collected lovely slices of agate and polished stones.  Naturally I’m hoping some of these will soon be wearable art; the kind I see in fashion and jewellery magazines.  At least until the next class is offered this autumn.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Bird Watching -- Lessons in Love and Parenting

Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun and left the sky filled with their honour.

Every year at this time I am absolutely enthralled by the intelligence, instinct, devotion and endurance of the birds that fill our skies with splendour.

In addition to the joy I get from mourning doves, chickadees, blue jays, pheasants and others that visit and feed in our garden I share in the courtship, hatching and parenting of falcons, eagles, hawks, ospreys and storks around the world.

Several years ago I heard about a live camera focused on an eagle’s nest in British Columbia. I watched occasionally for a few days, when I remembered. Then, one evening returning from class, of course still daytime on the west coast, I switched on. To my horror I saw the female tearing apart the nest. Though I did not have speakers, I could feel her cries of pain and anguish. I later discovered both her eggs had fallen from the nest.

Without anthropomorphising I could understand and share her loss.

Red-tailed hawk
Since then I have become a follower of some of the many bird cams in dozens of countries that allow us to observe the wonder of courtship, laying, hatching and  caring of  these feathered beings. The miracle of love and life. I hear them ee-chupping through their courtship, have learned the small subtle differences between male and females, seen nests and scrapes constructed and prepared, watched with some admitted heart-wrenching as a falcon dived from high at 200 miles an hour, to stun an unsuspecting pigeon for the eyases’ supper.

Osprey nest in Nova Scotia
I marvel at the patient sitting, waiting for the eggs to hatch. I watch in awe as the female carefully turns each egg to benefit from the warm brood patches on her breast; as the eagle gently tucks an egg back underneath her body.

Not only have I learned a lot, my respect for our feathered friends has deepened. You will never ever hear me use the derogatory phrase ‘bird-brained’.

Falcon with her four eggs, Derby, England
We can learn a lot from them. How to form good, lasting relationships; for birds frequently do; how to be a good parent, how to cope with loss and sorrow. For not all the eggs hatch, not all the young survive. And the parent birds do suffer and grieve. The amazing journey they make, mostly by instinct as they fly south each winter; how the female peregrine falcon stays in the cold north while the male goes south, but he returns to the same mate the following year. Some pairs have been together for more than a dozen years. That’s better than many marriages.

Eagles in Maine
For several years I benefitted from the knowledge of a lady in the Netherlands named Froona. She loved peregrine falcons and was a wealth of information about them; introducing me to locations world-wide to watch them in snow, driving rain and wind, all with the same determination to protect their young, rear them and prepare to let them go. For rarely do the young return, they find their own nests or scrapes. Sadly Froona died in 2009. Her passion remains on her blog, and in my mind.

Storks nest in Germany
From storks in Europe, where people encourage them to nest on their roofs, believing the birds bring prosperity, to eyries high above rivers and roads, to stony scrapes on high-rise buildings to ocean-side pines, these magnificent birds offer me so much each spring.

Soon, too soon, the white and gray bundles of fluff, find their wings, begin to explore outside the nesting place, unsteady at first, then with increasing confidence and curiosity; feathers replace the down. Come June eyases in many locations are banded, eaglets and red tailed hawks flex their great wing spans, find the delights of the skies, soaring, circling, doing what they were created for, carefully taught by loving parents. Eventually they fledge and fly away. The sense of loss, of not having them in my life remains for weeks.

Rochester, N.Y.

Newly-hatched eaglets







You can Google any of these bird species, followed by ‘live cam’ or similar wording to share in the joy and learning experiences.

Photos taken from various webcams

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Yoga at Chocolate Lake

Anytime I can combine two of my loves is a very good time.
Cocoa, resident dog at Chocolate Lake Hotel

This past weekend was even better. Chocolate Lake Hotel in Halifax was the venue for the 2011 Yoga Atlantic Conference at which I was presenting a workshop about my ‘Warrior Women – Yoga for Breast Cancer’ programme.

The view of Chocolate Lake from my room
Theme of the Conference was the Heart Chakra – Anahata – which was very appropriate. Our practice comes from the heart; every class is a satsang, a gathering of community and support. From my heart it is service, seva, to other women; a practice of being alive and awake in the world, of being connected.

In the summer of 2010 I was honoured with a grant from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, the first time in Atlantic Canada that such a grant has been sought and awarded. It allows me to offer a year of yoga to women fighting and surviving breast cancer. The programme began last September in Moncton and we are now into the third of our eight-week sessions.

Nancy's scarf
Offering my workshop in the Conference’s contemplative section I talked about why I had wanted to offer this service, the grant request process, getting sponsors and the positive benefits of the classes themselves. While teaching in Ontario several students went through their fight and survival while taking classes. One of my precious possessions is a scarf one student wore during her hair loss and gave to me when she “no longer needed it.” I also taught at Wellspring, a cancer support organization in that province.

Triangle pose using blocks for alignment
Yoga is recognized by many in the medical profession as being a positive, beneficial addition to conventional treatments. In classes we focus on the importance of calming breathing and meditation, inviting healing energy into the body. Many asanas are similar to the ones I teach in any class, many are specific to breast cancer survivors, others are modified or adapted. We also have ‘tea and heart-to-heart talk’ times, a walking meditation and the ladies are encouraged to journal. We create a supportive, caring fellowship and assistance in adjusting to a ‘new normal body’. There is as much laughter as learning.

Cecilia, one of my Warrior Women came with me to talk personally about how she has benefited and share some of the comments from other women in the class. Together we demonstrated how we adapt postures to each body’s needs.
Warrior women during meditation

This poem, written by Karen, another Warrior Woman says it more eloquently than I could. It comes from her heart.

TOGETHER

Can you make me feel good?
Can they take away?
All the pain and the fears.
That make up every day.

All the angels working for a cure.
All the people who are there for you,
     helps to be sure.
Can they understand:
      the scars and trials,
      the pain and the crying,
      the self pity and the guilt,
      the insecurity and the fear?
           
Yes together  -  to be with, listen to and talk with
women going through the same as you is
the best help of all !

Sunday, April 3, 2011

More of My Favourite Places

A couple of years ago I wrote a series of articles for Local in the Know about some of my Favourite Places in Moncton. These included Bistro-Cafés, delectable edibles, interior décor and fashion stores.

These can be read at knowmoncton.com/favorite-places/

I plan to continue that series here in my own journal pages.

One of my favourite places to curl up and read isn’t always at home. It’s in the sunny reading area of the new Riverview Public Library. As a life-long avid reader libraries have been a source of discovery, quiet contemplation and delight. Where else can you have so much fun, learn so much and meet great characters (between the pages) for free, or at the most a couple of dollars if there’s a book sale? There was this week, which added two more books to my shelves.

Often I go with a book list in my notebook - I've just added Henning Mankell's latest Wallander The Troubled Man -  but find a must-read almost as soon as I walk along the stacks. It’s not unusual for me to be weighed down with an armful of books I’d love to read.

That’s when I sit for a while and reluctantly make a selection.

We live just across the Petticodiac River (or trickle as it is now), just a short drive, but a bit too far to walk.  

During most of 2009 the library in Riverview was closed for renovations to the municipal building that contains both library and town offices. A definite gap in my reading months. Finally in January 2010 it re-opened, two and a half times larger than previously with a wall of large windows and special reading and activity areas, plus a special activity room.

Library Director Lynn Cormier told me membership has increased 10 to 15 per cent in the year since re-opening. Not suprising as we look around the bright, airy space. Lynn knew in Junior High she wanted to be a librarian. More than twenty years later and studies at Dalhousie University, she still loves her job. “I’ve great staff and I always love the people contact,” she says.


Fiction accounts for 65 per cent of books borrowed. Current popular books include The Room by Emma Donoghue; Secret Daughter by Shilpi Gowda; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, plus all Stieg Larson’s series. Books by Susan Wiggs, her Summer By the Sea for instance, and by Jodi Picoult,  Sing You Home is a big favourite. In non-fiction The King’s Speech by Mark Logue is a major request. Non-fiction popular categories are travel, self-help, parenting and cooking. You can also borrow CDs, audio and electronic books and there are now seven computers available.

Programmes at the Riverview Library include activities for mothers and babies with rhymes, songs and music.

There are pre-school and older children programmes and an all-summer reading project. Older library members can enjoy the book and travel clubs.



New this year is Conversation Circle, helping new immigrants with pronunciation and accent. 

Like me Lynn Cormier usually has several books she’s reading at any time. Among her favourites she lists The Book of Negroes, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

I settled into a comfortable wing chair for a while to turn the pages of another book on India from the sale table to add to my collection, before heading home.