VWF Volunteer Recognition Party Blues: Thursday, November 7th

Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research. -Marie Curie, scientist, Nobel laureate (1867-1934)  

Franz Kafka in 1906

There has been a lot of fussing about some of my bloodwork and for a while it looked like the surgery might have to wait until Mon or Tues. The latest word now however is that things are back on for Friday.  

Time passes slowly (thank God for Rob Ford) and lots of reading is getting done. Very much liked Boyden's Orenda and finally getting around to The Hare With Amber Eyes. Onward....Paul

Hi Paolo!

Glad to hear that surgery may well take place tomorrow. Have it done under a local so that you can text us about procedure as it takes place, sending pictures as well, a mini-cardio documentary: My Heart and Other Organs, a sure fire winner at next year's VIFF!

Very curious to hear about last night's concert. I was introduced to Rodney way back in the early '80's by a close friend. Loved, simply loved his Elvira!

We are off to the VWF Volunteer Appreciation Party this evening. Should be fun, always is. I'll be taking part in the Open Mic Reading again. Did so last year. Must away as I do need to polish my short piece, an open letter, Serendipity on Steroids: A Cockeyed Optimist Volunteer's Lop-sided Experience of this year's Festival! I'd be happy to send it along should you wish to read it.

Once again, we'll be in your corner, pulling for you whenever surgery takes place. Fondestos and Cheers, Patrizzio!

Pics: Polar Bear swim up at Little Shuswap this past Saturday; Misconduct, winery we'd not been to before and view from Poplar Grove, this past Sunday.

By all means send along the poem Patrick and say hello for me to mutual acquaintances. Cheers...Paul

7 pm Thurs Nov 7th

The last verbal update I had from the hematologist and one of my treatment doctors through this morning was that things were on track for surgery on Friday. I have now been "officially" notified that it now looks like Tuesday next week - (the long weekend doesn't help the timing). I am told that the surgeon was not happy with some of my blood work. Not unreasonably, he calls the shots. I'm not inclined to say "damn the torpedos, let's go for it".
Paul

Hello Victoria!

I called Soda Rock yesterday to learn that you were on holiday. Trust you will have had an enjoyable time wherever you were, whatever you did.

My wife and I are just recently back, ourselves, from a more than wonderful three month trip to Europe. Wines of Languedoc, in particular, were stunning. At any rate, through a silly set of circumstances Amex cancelled my card, hence, I assume, your inability to use card on file. Person I spoke with said to send an email and that you would give me call when you are back. I can be reached at home.

I will be driving to LA to spend Thanksgiving with our eldest daughter and grandsons so plan to stop by Soda Rock en route. Am leaving Vancouver on November 18th and think I'll be in Sonoma around the 20th. Thanks and Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hello,

I will be out of the office until Monday November 11th, with limited email access. I will get get back to you then.  For general enquiries you may email info@sodarockwinery.com. Have a great day! Cheers, Victoria

Hi Patrick,

The major tune up on your Madone is complete.  The total after tax is $73.49.  The mechanics notes are below.

Performed major tune up.  Cleaned bike.  Soaked D/T.  Cleaned and trued wheels.  Adjusted front and rear brakes.  Adjusted front and rear derailleurs.  Rear derailleur b-axle asembly is bent causing mediocre shifting in the smaller cogs when in the small ring.  Would need to order a new assembly to fix.  Lubed chain.  Checked all bolts.  Test ridden - rides well.

Please let us know if you would like to replace the b-axle assembly on your rear derailleur as would need to order the part. Thanks, Dan

Hi Jon!

Sorry that it has taken me so long to formally invite you to our Book Club: NRBC, The Non-Readers Book Club as it is fondly known as many of the regualrs never get around to reading the book selected! Anyway, the next NRBC will be on Sunday, 17 November.I will be hosting the gathering. "If you have not finished reading the book please bring at least one bottle of rare single malt. If you cannot attend send two bottles!" Last two sentences are from Whirlygig, de facto Secretary!

The book is Blood's a Rover, James Ellroy (Victor). The title to follow: Blood by Lawrence Hill (George). Pat will pick the book to follow Blood.

We live at #20-1425 Lamey's Mill Road, but two minutes from the VWF offices. Perhaps we will see you later this evening at the Volunteer Party. Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hello Inja!

How wonderful to receive your message, Janet, even if it has taken me more than a month to reply! (Must admit I haven't had time to scan but one or two blog entries. Hope to take my time once I'm quasi-caught up with my own email backlog.) No excuses but plenty of reasons! I trust you are well. Are you back in Vancouver? Loads to tell but we must meet to share everything. Our trip was truly wonderful and I think having a bike along made it so, for me at least. England was terrific as we finally have seem more than just London. Saw Jamie twice as he came to Cornwall for a week and then to France for about 10 days.

Dinner with you, at some point would be great. Be more than pleased to have it at our place so that we can pick you for tips on India. Cora lee has set 2015 as the year for the trip

And now it's Thursday and I don't know where time has gone! Anyway, I hope this message finds you well, wherever you are. Give us a call when you have a moment and we can catch up a bit. I'm off on Monday, November 18th, to drive to LA to house sit for a cousin of Ayn's. Cora Lee will fly down as she has too, too many important meetings, (having been away for three months!) to take time to drive. Both of us will be back on December 3rd. Fondestos and Cheers, Patrizzio!

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Hello Darling!

How wonderful to receive your message and know roses look great! Loved the Halloween snaps! It was our 42nd anniversary of meeting! Clara and Dusty arrived earlier that afternoon so we had dinner at home. Otherwise we usually go out.  Anyway, I hope this message finds you and Madcap well, wherever you are!

Hope Lisa is fine. Please pass along best wishes from us. To Mad Max and company as well, of course. I'm off on Monday, November 18th, to drive to LA to house sit for a cousin of Ayn's, in Simi Valley. Cora Lee will fly down as she has too, too many important meetings, (having been away for three months!) to take time to drive. Both os us will be back on December 3rd. Will send a message to Lauren to remind her about coming for Thanksgiving if she wants to do so. Chance to meet Ayn and Los Horridos if she has not already done so. Fondestos and Cheers, Patrizzio! 

7 pm Thurs Nov 7th
The last verbal update I had from the hematologist and one of my treatment doctors through this morning was that things were on track for surgery on Friday. I have now been "officially" notified that it now looks like Tuesday next week - (the long weekend doesn't help the timing). I am told that the surgeon was not happy with some of my blood work. Not unreasonably, he calls the shots. I'm not inclined to say "damn the torpedos, let's go for it".  Paul

Serendipity on Steroids: A Cockeyed Optimist Volunteer's lop-sided experience of this year's Festival! An Open Letter!!

Many of you know that Cora Lee, my long suffering wife, and I, were fortunate enough to have been travelling for a tad more than three months this past July, through mid-October, in England, Italy, for her not me, and France. For my part I was happy to stay even longer, the French wines and cheeses, the soft summer breezes in Languedoc and along the Canal du Garonne so beguiling and alluring as to make one forget all but the present moment. However, for her part, Coriandre was ready to return, missing, by the end of the holiday, her own bed. Furthermore, we had committed ourselves to volunteering again. Of course, I wanted to return to friends and family as well, and, not surprisingly, I do count the Vancouver Writers Festival as family, the members of which, whether staff or other volunteers, many of whom we have come to know better with each subsequent Festival.

So in a very real sense we were coming home to a dear and much loved family: Wise and gentle Uncle Hal, always there with the right word at the right time, wryly delivered; older sister Carolina keeping the troops fed and watered; Mother Kathryn tirelessly tending her immense brood of volunteer chicks; Big Sis Camilla, efficient, organized but with the mouth of a sailor, at times; Favourite Cousin Eduardo, ever with an easy smile on his friendly face and, last but not least, the much beloved nut of the family, Crazy Aunt, High Octane Heideh, the small outboard strapped to her fuelled on nicotine and adrenalin. So let me thank you all, the volunteers I had the pleasure to work with and all the staff, not just the unlucky ones I've singled out, who worked so tirelessly to make this such an incredibly successful, wonderfully enjoyable Festival, once again. I do feel extremely privileged to consider myself part of this remarkable venture.

Speaking of which, for me, some of the highlights came listening to Jo Nesbø, Margaret Atwood and Will Self. Their very articulateness was mesmerizing, their scintillating wit, electrifying, almost frightening. Yet somehow, this was not unexpected, knowing, to the extent that I did, their work. And this is not to diminish their sessions. Far from it. I could have listened all day and night, wanted to do so, in fact. However, what struck me most about this year's Festival was something that I know Hal has mentioned, often, from one festival to another: the opportunity to discover authors you have never even heard of before. And of course, the festival allows this in spades. Hence my silly title: Serendipity on Steroids.

A few brief examples. On Tuesday afternoon, I took in a riotous, fun-filled session: Mystery, Adventure and Lies with Rachelle Delaney, (The Metro Dogs of Moscow), Gary Fagan, (Danny Who Fell in a Hole), and Meg Tilly, (A Taste of Heaven), suitable for grades 4-7. Was more than a delight to be in a room filled with such enthusiastic, rambunctious, bouncing off the walls, squirming in their seats readers. Not to say that they were not an appreciative and quiet audience when authors were reading or speaking but the energy just crackled through the room, as I am sure I need not tell anyone who has been at such a session. Took me back to my days in the Curric Lab at UBC when I was a lot closer to Children's/Young Adult Literature than I am, to much regret, now. 

For her part, Meg gave an ultra-hilarious, highly animated reading which had the kids yowling. Excerpt had to do with potty humour so of course she was reading to the perfect demographic and had everyone, including the adults, howling, rolling in the aisles. Not just yuk yuks either, as she was able to take the incident in question and use it to provide a very moving, and I do mean moving, insight into the minds and personalities of her two nine-year old best girlfriends.

Waited until the appreciative hordes had departed and then had Meg sign her book. Not that I pretend to know her but I felt that she really was quite courageous in terms of some of the personal revelations she made during the session. She admitted that she had never, ever thought that she would write. Not quite sure why but she was not in formal schooling for roughly Grades 3 and 4 so she never really learned to spell or sound out words. This inability hounded her, haunted her and she didn't start to write until she stopped acting, over twenty years ago, more or less. She said, while we chatted, that she hadn't spoken so openly when she first started to be published but, at some point, came to the decision that perhaps her story might be of some help to others so afflicted. How wonderful, I thought, to be so unmindful of your own painful secret so that you are moved to want to try to help someone else overcome something so potentially crippling.

I had fully intended to take in another session, moderated by Joseph Boyden, (I have been a Citizens for Boyden Fan ever since he did his infamous moose calls a number of Festivals ago.), but I learned just minutes before it was to begin, eavesdropping on Camilla, that he was stranded in Victoria. I gather he was to fly, by small float plane, to Vancouver but heavy fog cancelled flight! I would have liked to take in both sessions but as they were on at the same time that was not possible, of course. At any rate, my point is that this is what I enjoy so much about the Festival. Through Chance, Serendipity, call it what you will, one happens upon people and stories that are hard to imagine or believe ever existed. Again, I cannot stress how fortunate I feel to be able to take advantage of such a wondrous situation.
 
Next day at Studio 1398 I took in Stories in Good Company with Dan Bar-El, Ashley Spires and Eric Walters, all children's authors/illustrators, (both, in Spires' case), aimed at grades K-3. All three were simply wonderful and knew their audience. It was so heartening to see them relate to the students in such a supportive, encouraging, non-patronizing way . Dan is a truly marvellous story teller and he "told" his story about a dragon who can't even light his own birthday candles before showing slides of the book itself. Ashley spent much of her time showing us where her ideas came from and how they eventually materialized into characters in her published works. Binky the cat, I believe, started out as a tiny plasticine model, little bigger than one of our discontinued pennies, fashioned when she was roughly six herself, saying to all the young minds that you too can do this if you wish to do so.
 
Although I don't know his work, I gather Eric uses a lot of animals in his books so his slides juxtaposed shots of real animals and their realization in published form. He is also heavily involved with an orphanage in Kenya and did the same thing with the actual orphans and their surroundings and the work based on their lives. His commitment to this on-going project is all consuming and he admitted, when we chatted briefly, after the session, that he spends more time on it than on his writing. Nevertheless, what a wonderful, important message to convey, to our future adults, without being at all heavy handed, about giving of oneself and caring for those less fortunate.

Taken together with the session for grades 4-7, it struck me what a fine, fine job the Festival is doing, and has always sought to do, to reach out and include children and young adults. Word! (2), for grades 8-12, with Corin Raymond, Alison Wearing and Tanya Evanson confirmed this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Corin started with excerpts from his one-man show, Bookworm, and in it he talks about how he developed his love of books and reading in such a wonderfully humourous and engaging way that he literally turned the nerd bookworm stereotype into a super hero, Spider Man, in his case.

One of his most telling bits was the one in which he describes how friends and family react when they discover that he re-reads many of his treasured tomes. He argues that nobody seems to find it strange that one listens to a favourite album over and over again or returns to a special restaurant for another similar meal or even continues to see a close friend: "I met you once so goodbye! I don't need to see you again!", was how he put it and had the audience, (mainly middle and high school students), roaring, shreiking with delight by the time this section was over. One of the most wrenchingly honest, yet funniest monologues I have ever heard.

In spite of all this, the cynics will say that these events have to do with funding and filling seats during the day. In part, this may well be true but how else are we to nurture our future readers and writers, authors and illustrators, poets and playwrights? And this is not to say that the adults present at these sessions were short changed. Far from it. I, for one, was immersed in the innocence and vitality and boundless curiosity and enthusiasm of youth and was able to share it, to revel in it, and be reminded, (for we, as adults, usually need to be reminded, I think, to remain child-like), to look upon the world with openness and excitement and unbridled laughter.

Saying these things, reading these things, thinking such thoughts almost brings tears to my eyes. Tears brimming, not for lost innocence, but for joy, gratefulness, out of thankfulness for being reminded and reassured that there are ways to recapture, if but for an instant, a fleeting moment perhaps, the magic and wonder of freshness. Books, of course, for me and I suspect, many, certainly all here, play a central role in this process of reinvigorating our imaginations. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you to The Festival, for allowing me to share, once again, in this marvellous endeavour, in the sheer wonder of seeing and feeling anew.
 
Yours truly, Pollyanna. 

Hi Kathryn and Lili!

Just a short note to thank you and Lili/James and rest of staff for lovely, lovely party. Have attached a couple of the snaps I took. Off to California on November 18th. Cora Lee is too, too busy with more volunteer meetings to take time to drive. She flies down on Thanksgiving morning and we'll have turkey dinner with Ayn and Los Horridos at Ayn's cousin's house in Simi Valley where I'm house/cat sitting. We are both back on December 3rd, just in time to start gearing up for Christmas!

Please tell James I'm looking forward to hooking up for some cycling, once back. Pass along my email address if he wants to set a date for first outing! Fondestos and Cheers, Patrizzio! 

Airport Codes:

The International Air Transit Association assigns three letter airport codes to each airport, which are typically comprised of the first three letters of the city the airport is located in. There are many exceptions, though, especially in cities with multiple airports or where the first three letters of the city would be ambiguous. In those cases, a close-ish approximation of the airport's or city's name is used instead. New York City, for example, has both LaGuardia and Kennedy, which are LGA and JFK, as "NYC" would be insufficient to differentiate between the two. Similarly, nearby Newark uses EWR because "NEW" could be a lot of places. But what about LAX in Los Angeles? The X doesn't stand for anything -- it's just a placeholder. "LA," the airport's original code, is unambiguous, but when the three-character codes became standard, the airport needed to expand its code. It adopted a meaningless X at the end.