The Unmistakeable Smell of Mud

View from the window: tide marsh with cardinal

When we left for Florida, it was minus twelve. When we came back, it was minus twelve. 

In between these two low points, we had a lot of fun.

St Augustine is an interesting place. It's a living city version of one of those exposed cliff faces where every layer accounts for an age in geologic time. 

The Spanish colony of St. Augustine was founded in 1565.

Since then the historical strata in St Augustine show: 

• the three-hundred-plus-year-old fort Castillo San Marcos 

• the reconstituted historic old town from the 17th and 18th centuries

• the vestiges of the American revolution 

• the repurposed monolithic architecture from the age of the great American railroads

• the markers scattered throughout the town recalling the struggle for human rights

• the living reminders of the hippie movement at local watering holes 

The small badge says: "Horn Broken, watch for finger"

• and, in the most up-to-the-minute layer, the touristification of all of the above, so that slaughter, warfare, thievery, economic imperialism, slavery, environmental destruction and oppression are all branded as entertainment for children and summed up in the cheerful amplified narration of the tourist train drivers.

Bruce and our gracious host Ed demonstrate the fun of working on a road gang. And Ripley puts its spin on the death of 300 French soldiers at the hands of (the desperate and starving) Spanish.

Since we've been home, the only thing I have had trouble believing was that it was ever going to be warm again.

But, two days ago as I walked across the Allan gardens on my way home, there was the unmistakeable smell of mud, a sure sign of spring.

Molly's next-to-penultimate post can be found here.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Enough

This is what our back patio looked like on Wednesday night, and I hear it's going to be minus twelve tomorrow.

Enough already. We're going to Florida.

Stay tuned! Two Saturdays from now will bring the next thrilling instalment of the small details of my life and the first of the last three of the increasingly tragicomic stories about Molly-the-Dog.

Thanks for reading!

Stay warm!

Karen

Bubble World: Finale

What passed for normal in the structured world of the Queen's Public Executive Program was that we began class at 8:30 every morning, broke for lunch at 12:30, resumed class at 1:30, broke again at 3:30 - and enjoyed lifestyle activities such as yoga, ceramics class and rock climbing -  and reconvened at 6:00 p.m. for the last class of the day, which went right to 9:00 p.m.

After every evening session, Bill, the course co-ordinator, would invite the class to join him and the guest speaker in the convention centre pub (a former coach house) for a refreshing beverage and conversation. With the one exception of the night I engaged with the right-wing nut (I tossed a glass of white wine down my throat and fled), I passed on the offer. My normal path at 9:00 p.m. was to take a swing by the snack jars for some sesame things and by the pop fridge for a cranberry juice and head back to my room in time to have a chat on the phone with Bruce. Then I would go to bed.

As the course progressed I picked up from the break and dinner time chatter that some of my course mates were regulars at the pub. They had good stories about Bob the bartender, who was convinced the place was haunted.

None of these stories made me change my pattern, except for the last full day of classes, Thursday, February 20. I was already worn down by the stress of being away from home and being force fed giant amounts of information. On top of that, the day started very early. The program wranglers had arranged for me two morning yoga classes, and Thursday's was the last of those. This was also the day the Canadian women's hockey team played their final. So, I was out of bed at five a.m., the first class was at 8:30 as usual, but, rather than holding a class from 1:30 to 3:30, Bill put the hockey game up on the screen in the classroom. While my classmates rooted for the home team, I went for a walk to take pictures of treacherous sidewalks and spooky old prison buildings. 

Bill's magnanimity in giving over class time to the hockey game did not extend to giving us less class time. We still had to sit through three more hours of lectures after the game was over. Then, we had to sprint over to another part of the convention centre for a reception and farewell banquet.

Both of these events featured all the wine you could drink, and the wait staff were assiduous in keeping glasses full. 

My table mates at dinner included a man who had distinguished himself in class as bright, funny and engagingly argumentative. He was also one of the pub regulars. We had such a good chat over dinner I failed to keep track of how much wine I drank, so had no judgement left to say "no" when my table mates said, "Let's go to the pub."

Practically the whole class was there. The place roared with conversation and laughter. I ordered what I thought would be my only drink: a single shot of Jack Daniels paired with a big glass of ice water.

By the time I finished my fourth drink, there were about five of us left in the pub. Among other things as I consumed all those drinks, I'd watched a classmate deliver drop-dead perfect impressions of some of the most oddly mannered of our course lecturers and laughed so hard at other random silliness that I feared I would pee my pants.

I also chatted up Bob the bartender about the ghosts. This is what he said:

"It was during one of the biggest events we hold here and there must have been eighty people in the room. There were two women sitting at the bar. They were dressed funny - like goths or something. Anyway, the noise in the room was incredible but I could hear them plain as day, even at the other end of the bar. One of them was talking about how she'd played in the rafters - this place used to be a coach house you know - and then they turned and looked right at me. I went over to them and had my hand on the bar in front of them. One of them put her hand on mine - it was cold as ice! - and said, 'everything will be OK'." 

I believed every word he said. I wished a ghost would reassure me, too.

But, Bob had taken exception to the drop-dead perfect impression of Bill the course co-ordinator and called time early to throw us out. 

And that's when the man I'd shared dinner conversation with said he had an expensive bottle of Irish whiskey in the trunk of his car. Consensus was quickly reached that he should go get it while we all retired to another classmate's room.

After two shots of perhaps the best Irish in the world, I called a halt to my participation in the festivities. I said I had to go to bed. It was after two in the morning. I'd been awake for more than twenty hours, had had far too much to drink - and had mixed wine and whiskey - and even in my state of extreme inebriation worried that I might feel a bit unwell the next (later the same) day.

But before they let me go, my fellows demanded one more thing of me. One of them held an invisible microphone in front of my face and asked me, "Karen, what one thing would you have done different?"

"I'd have been born with a penis," I said, and went to my room.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Here's Molly's newest post!

Karen

Bubble World Part Two: Stockholm

I should explain what were the circumstances of my accommodations during my weeks away.

They did not just treat us well. They treated us exceptionally, enormously, almost shamefully well at the Donald Gordon Conference Centre, a part of Queen's University. 

I don't think I've slept in a more comfortable bed. The food - you can guess I'm a bit picky about my food - was tremendous. There was no whim or trouble so great or small that they would not move heaven and earth to accommodate it. I'm not kidding. 

I forgot to pack my calcium supplement and vitamins (both of these run to some money) and hazarded a request that someone be sent out to fetch me some. So it was done (at no charge). 

I hankered to go for walks but it was terribly cold and had not brought a hat. Could they get me one of those? So it was done. 

We received some oversized maps of the polar regions as swag from one of the speakers. I fretted that mine might be crushed on the train. They fetched tubes. 

But the tubes are awkward to carry, I said, can't these be shipped? They made it so.

The food was not only good, it was readily available in considerable quantity during the entire day. Every imaginable breakfast - cereal, fruit, eggs, meat of just about any description, pastries, oatmeal - was already on the buffet or could be ordered. Lunch and supper offered every possible option: carnivore, omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, gluten free. And, if you wanted something else, so long as they had it in the kitchen, your wish was their command.

Life below stairs: the classroom I sat in for 9 hours every day.

Then there were the snacks. At every break goodies awaited us up the stairs from our subterranean classroom: mini smoothies in shot glasses festooned with short drinking straws; spears of fresh berries; endive spoons with dollops of blue cheese, toasted hazelnuts and pear chutney; savoury pinwheel pastries with jalapeño peppers and jack cheese. 

If fresh gourmet snacks were not your thing, there were large mouth jars (fourteen of them) full of pre-fabricated snacks: jelly beans, mini chocolate bars, jujubes, wine gums, wasabi peas, dried fruit, a bunch that I couldn't readily identify and those salty, slightly greasy, sesame snack things I ate so many of I made myself a little sick.

No wonder that by the beginning of the second week I was starting to identify with my captors.

The group of people I was spending every day with were accomplished, interesting, fun and friendly.

The official photo from the sidelines.
I asked a student to take a picture of us getting our picture taken.

I got to go to yoga.

330 Yoga in Kingston offered us a private class every day. We were shepherded there by Queen's students, in this instance, Tara, the one with her hands over her head. 

On the Saturday of our short weekend (we had classes on Saturday morning and Sunday night), I took a walking tour of old Kingston with a professor emeritus of History and Geography from Queen's university. 

The view from the courtyard by Miss Piggy's

A small cohort of my classmates and I -- those of us left behind  for the weekend like boarding school kids at Christmas -- ate another fine meal Saturday night at old Fort Henry.

I was hammered into submission not only by the good food and easy living. The course offerings were better in week two; there was more group work and there were some practical lessons offered up from interesting case studies. We almost never heard about the good old days.

Still, there is no question that I was holding a lot in. I missed Bruce. I missed my home. I missed the mobility of my life as a pedestrian in Toronto. Students don't shovel sidewalks and the freeze/thaw cycle made even the cleared pathways perilous. I felt pretty cooped up.

In case you're wondering, that's all ice.

All of this sets the stage for my last night in Kingston, which featured an epic tear down, more about which next week.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

You can read Molly's latest post here.

Karen