The Highest Form of Hope

Dear Coldplay,

You are awesome and I love you!! Your new album is wonderful and I listen to it daily.
However…

Do you realize that you robbed me of a milestone experience that should have happened years ago but I was too busy having babies and getting education and generally being a contributing member to society and now I finally had the opportunity to go to my first real concert of a band I actually love but you decided that Toronto was far more important than Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg combined even though I would have been willing to pay at least three times as much as you were charging in the States to even get a brief glimpse of you from behind a pillar in the nose bleed section and drive up to sixteen hours to attend a concert in any of the three locations in western Canada none of which hold any interest for me other than an H & M or an Ikea????????!!!!!!!!!!!

Please send me airfare and free tickets to see you in Toronto. I promise I won’t stalk you.

Sincerely,

A woman who won’t get to see a real concert before she’s thirty

Labels: bitterness, celebrity stalking, letters

A last week Prime Minister Harper issued a formal apology for the treatment of First Nation's children in residential schools, and for the premise of the schools themselves and to commence the work of the commission for truth and reconciliation. I applaud the conservative government's willingness to finally take some proactive steps. Certainly motives are never quite what they seem in politics, but this was a long time coming and I'm glad the conservatives have started this process.

I am saddened that Canadian churches have not taken on much of a role in this commission unlike the part the churches played in Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Not that there aren't some wonderful programs run by denominations aimed at forgiveness and restoration out there... I'm just disappointed that we don't often discuss such things from the pulpit, or in religious educational institutions. We don't properly understand how we came to such a point - to the point of fully participating in an institution that was so rotten to the core.

Approximately a third (and many claim up to a half) of children who attended residential schools never returned home and often parents were not informed of their deaths until years later. Residential schools were places of institutional abuse, where children were shamed because of their language and culture and where they were ultimately robbed of the the love and attention that only a family can provide, which is probably the most significant effect of the residential school policy.

Unless we rightly understand the past, it will be impossible to understand our present situation. Hopefully this commission will lead to a greater understanding and from that, a greater sense of responsibility and compassion. I know for myself, Canadian history did not make sense (and did not come to life) until I began to understand the complex and often injustice relationship between Aboriginal people and the newcomers. I'd encourage everyone to follow the progress of this commission and to discuss it with your family, friends and coworkers.

Labels: residential schools, truth and reconciliation commission

This weekend I was a risk taker...

My middle name is not "Danger", it's Averill. And I wouldn't consider myself the safest person in the world... but not the riskiest either. I'm more likely to do something fun spontaneously like go to the city for pizza on a whim, but I would never sky-dive. This is my area of riskiness, and this weekend I explored the boundaries of such places.

To start the weekend off (my weekend begins on Thursday night - it's the "pastor's weekend"), I cut my own hair. I had the feeling of too much hair around my face so I cut bangs. It really was a recipe for disaster, but unbelievably it worked out. I looked down into a sink full of hair and thanked my lucky stars I didn't end up with a mullet!

The following evening, I bravely joined some local gentlemen in a game of cards and found myself taking risks (educated risks) - both in showing up to play (outnumbered 10 to 1) and in the actual playing of the game. I'm insanely lucky to have a husband who enjoys my company so much that he would drag me along to a guys night activity (and friends who don't mind me being there either!).

The next day Paul and I traveled to Biggar (crazy I know) for an adjudicated art show I entered earlier this month. This was the first time I exhibited the series I've been working on for the past year and a half (and have been thinking about for three years plus). The show isn't technically finished. I still have one painting left, but adjudication only allows five paintings and my series will eventually have six.

I can't adequately describe the feeling of putting so many hours and thought (and money!) into something for so long and then to come to the point where you share it with the world (or in my case, Biggar SK) and you wait for a response. Was it all for nothing? Will anyone understand? Will they like it? Will it speak? It was almost as if there were nude pictures of myself up on that gallery wall for everyone to see (disturbing, but that's the closest I can come)! So you can imagine I was exceedingly thankful that Paul, C and D (and J!) came out to support me... it meant so much.

These past months have been risky. Knowing I could be pouring myself into something that had no guarantees of "succeeding"... Especially at the end when everything could so easily be cast into doubt. But the response was encouraging - and frightening. Many people came up and asked me about my work and the meaning behind it... and I hope that I pointed them in the right direction, though it soon became evident I should make a few minor changes to these pieces, and to my explanations, before the next show. Two people talked to me with tears about how the paintings had made them think of loved ones they had lost... it was unsettling to realize that these paintings had opened up painful events for those who looked at them. I felt humiliated that I undervalued artwork that had an emotional effect on some that I certainly wasn't prepared for.

It was an intense experience, one that I am unpacking now, as I write... I ended up winning the first prize, and I know that various options are open to me now, I just need to figure out what the next step is. And unbelievably, I already have started sketchbook work on my next series! I hope I can share more about these paintings soon... It would be nice to show them a little closer to home. But if you are interested in seeing them soon, they're up in Biggar until the end of the month.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been willing to walk with me on this journey... you know who you are!

Labels: art, life in general, risky

The deepest indigo menacing fury
First in the south, grows and transforms
The timid pink white into life's blood
Into wavelengths of sound and light
So awestruck

I'll wait against the fence line
Because your beauty has weight presence
And gently demands my waiting
Ask the clouds to burst above
And the Earth to turn and contract

Find me in the open spaces
In my smallness and my neediness
Burrs and grass stuck to my pants
And sucking insects in my hair
So awestruck

Lovely lines and greeting birds
Your lines are living breathing moving
And your form is more real than I
Weight and mass and volume
in all
all in
in all

Labels: poetry

Kids are a great source of creative outlets... Sasha has a bunch of really cool Playmobil toys, both medieval and Roman soldiers. My mother-in-law suggested that I make some sort of apparatus for these soldiers to fight on. I thought that sounded like fun!

I started with a bunch of cardboard pieces taped and layered together. Then I used telephone wire and tape to make a frames for the trees, mountains and the volcano. After that I could mache it. For the mountains I made a paste out of newspaper, water and flour. I just used a hand mixer to break it all up - it was pretty nifty! I could mold all sorts of things with it and it added natural looking texture to the mountains. After that was dry, I painted it - first with house paint and then with acrylic. It was lots of fun - a little time consuming but not that difficult. It's hard to tell who is more excited about these new possibilities, Sasha or Paul!

All in fun, Sasha may have some difficulties in history class in the future. The Romans are attacking soldiers clearly from a medieval era. We've been pretending they're "barbarians". And a pirate has joined the Roman side. Whatever. I'm sure the police will soon be involved to. A surfer stopped on the island for a rest some time ago. The firefighters are also having trouble staying uninvolved while the barbarians light their cannon...

Just another day of historical inaccuracies in the Morgun household!

Labels: family, life in general, playmobil

Sasha: We need a doctor.
Casey: Yeah, you can be a vegetarian. (to me)
Me: A vegetarian?
Sasha: You're a animal doctor! A vegetarian!

Labels: humor, kids