local & Tsawassen trees & c.

searchable LIFE - Google Books

No War on the Moon!

And now, once again, there are plans to bomb the Moon. This time the unilateral strike is aimed at the Moon’s South Pole and the payload will be delivered by the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) spacecraft; the excuse given is that this is an effort to find water deep under lunar surface. The craft was launched in late June and is currently orbiting the Earth until it finds its target; if all goes according to plan, the M-Day bombing will be 8 October 2009...

from Donato Mancini,  "Candles in the Wind" at ditch

It took me some time to realise that Marilyn Monroe, Lady Di, and Tuk, the last polar bear, were all 36 years old at the time of their deaths. Obviously, I had found a perfect basis for a series of poems. 6 years later, I would be further along with the series (aiming for 36 Candles, of course) except for the severe difficulty of the form, and the other strict constraints including, crucially, that I have sincere feelings for the subject of the tribute...

check out UNDER THE SUN, Vancouver artist Roy Arden's amazing new blog...

an oldish essay of mine on RA's Fragments...

farewell
Chris Connor

Arcady Auto Court

Located at the corner of the Old Chemainus Road and the highway across from Coronation Mall is the Arcady Auto Court. Back in the mid thirties Dr. Hannington developed the piece of property as tourist attraction and campground. The name comes from Arcady, “a region in ancient Greece in the Peloponnesus. Its inhabitants, relatively isolated from the rest of the known civilized world, proverbially lived a simple, pastoral life”.

It quickly became a popular attraction with Victoria residents who would come up by train for the day to play on the beach or to enjoy the teahouse. The teahouse was located in the large building visible from the highway. For longer stays, a number of the cabins could be rented.

The Arcady was also known for its beach and the proximity to the estuary of the creek. Dr Hannington and a partner are reported to have had a pond built on the present site of the Safeway. Apparently, the pond was stocked with fish and they planned to rent small boats for fishing.

In the late 30’s the cabins became home to many young couples who moved to Ladysmith to take jobs with Comox Logging and Railroad. For some this would be their first home in Canada as they had just immigrated; they would live in one of the cabins until they could build up a nest egg to purchase their own home. With its year-round residents and vacationers, the site was home to many a good party. Island residents would come here for their summer holidays and it was popular as well with tourists travelling up and down the Island.

In 1956, Marge and Herman Anderson purchased the site and raised their family. It was a great site for kids to grow up on as they had access to the ocean, green space and the creek. Marge continued to rent out the cabins up until her passing in 2004.

A few years ago the site was purchased by Marge’s granddaughter and well-known actress Pam Anderson. Pam in partnership with the Courtnall brothers (Russ and Geoff) of hockey fame, are developing the property into it’s next stage of evolution. Already many of the old cabins have been moved to Coombs and preserved for further use. Plans call for the protection of the significant trees on the site and preserving as much green space as practical. It is reported that a total of 83 units out of an allowable 112 will be built, the land coverage will only be 33 per cent of the site rather than the possible 60 per cent allowed. This means there will be 17,000 sq. m. of construction although the site allows for 30,0000 sq. m. of construction. The units will be built on the larger size of about 1,500 to 2,000 sq. ft. Plans also include rebuilding the wharf/marina that was once there.

While it’s a shame to lose this bit of heritage, it’s exciting to know that the site will once again be filled with people enjoying this special place. ¨

Clare Singleton

Arcady Auto Court, Ladysmith

Local trees & c.

HOBOTOPIA

moggnificent collection of east van cats

even mentions my dog book!  Sadly there seem to be few ancestors of the great red-headed cat league that dominated the alleys around Salsbury & Victoria in the mid-80's.  I caught a glimpse of the patriarch once, snoozing on a garage roof--as red as a fox & as big as a cougar, yellow tusk-like incisors...

Ken Loach's great film "Kes" is on TCM tonight...

happy 300 to Samuel Johnson

He loved the poor as I never yet saw any one else do, with an earnest desire to make them happy.--What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to common beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence?" says Johnson. "It is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths..."

from Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes

from a wonderful blog: A Book of Moss

Murmur, pictures of flocking birds by Richard Barnes

Nanaimo's own!

Kim Cattrall speaks out against the cuts to arts funding in BC

Paul & Richard, The Podcast

On September 3, Paul McCarthy and Richard Jackson flew up from LA to give what turned out to be a hilarious and historic talk at Seattle Art Museum—but a few hours before that, they sat down in a brightly lit conference room upstairs at the museum for a private conversation with a tape recorder and me.

McCarthy starts right in with a story about his liquid bodily functions, which seems right enough...

Keep Calm and Carry On

A series of posters appeared on bus shelters in 2002, with slogans such as ‘Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes’ (with said eyes being CCTV cameras). They had distinct similarities in their typography with 1930s’ posters for London Transport by the Bauhaus designer László Moholy-Nagy. They quite deliberately played with the Orwellian associations of 1930s’ and 1940s’ design, the benign eyes watching over London’s bus commuters being explicitly delineated in mock-‘totalitarian’ terms. This is a rather queasy joke. London has some of the heaviest surveillance in the world, and more CCTV cameras than any other city. To treat this as something jollily benevolent is deeply dubious. It advertises the allegedly caring role of the Metropolitan Police in their surveillance of the bus or tube passenger; something which can only leave a foul taste in the mouth after the public execution of Jean Charles de Menezes. The great irony of all this is that the supposedly rather overbearing paternalistic public institutions of the 1940s were either unable or unwilling to set up the apparatus of surveillance that every Londoner now regards as normal. What Orwell did not realize was that the surveillance society would be accompanied by ironic jokes, not shrill exhortations...