Enchanted Brunch

Saturday Morning at the Pink House. Mouse spins some tunes on the stereo. "Better when we're together." Croissants from St. Boniface, cave-aged gruyere from Deluca's, Fruit from last night's opening and an impromptu chocolate dipping sauce followed by disco dancing and stories of the boys when they were small. Mouse's first word, the word he gasped when he looked out the window and saw fresh snow on the ground--"Camembert!"

You Gotta Freeze To Shine

We are back from our trip to Manitoba, having boarded the magical portal of an Air Canada jet and being transported from the dry wind and biting cold of Winnipeg to the humid hothouse of Vancouver in the blink of an inflight movie. It was wonderful to see friends and colleagues and to finally perform The Laughing Dress at Video Pool's 25th Anniversary Celebration.

Oh the creaky body of the aging performance artist, the muddled memory of estrogen storm cells. I have never been so nervous about performing. The body loves to perform, but more and more it resists performing, preferring hibernation under second-hand knitted afghans and threadbare feather duvets. All the same, once you have passed through the portal of performance, you can't wait until the next one. Your body and soul have been stripped bare of its baggage. You have been transformed. You are relieved, released, lightened and enlightened. You feel euphoric and you feel like hell. In spite of all the performer's nightmares, knots, and neuroses, you have survived to perform another day. The self-drawn Red River Cart of your Career makes its slow, painful progress towards the future.

Dear Mr. President

Stephen J. Toope
President and Vice-Chancellor
Office of the President
The University of British Columbia
6328 Memorial Road
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2

Dear President Toope;

"Imagine cities as places where there is concern for air, water, and land, where working people can afford to live and raise their families. Imagine rural life protected and preserved, not turned into one commercial strip after another."
--Carl Anthony

A tiny tree frog covered in pollen emerges from a zucchini blossom. A hummingbird drinks nectar from nasturtium blossoms as I gather edible petals to sell at the UBC farm market. A woman in traditional Mayan dress measures two pounds of clay-coloured beans in a hand-made scale. Four nine year old boys taste rhubarb for the first time in the muffins they have made from scratch. These are a few of my favourite memories of UBC farm.

"The natural world is a resource for aesthetic appreciation, education, and recreation. Cities that are barren of trees suffer from the heat-island effect as pavement and roofs absorb and radiate heat. When soils are displaced with paving, water can't percolate into the aquifers, and this too affects the microclimate."

I have been volunteering at UBC farm for three years now. I've worked in the market garden, extracting honey, and teaching elementary school students where their food comes from in the Landed Learning Program. As a mother, artist, and a girl from the prairies the farm has been a place of education, enchantment, and inspiration for myself and our entire family.

"Building community gardens, or opening up and restoring creeks and watersheds, provides opportunities to bring people of different jurisdictions, neighborhoods, and social classes together."

I spent my childhood in a home surrounded by wheat fields and natural prairie. I have seen the degradation of the grasslands, and the ill effects of increased pesticide use on the land. When I go to UBC Farm I see hope for the future of our food security. I meet students who understand the need to farm ecologically and sustainably. I see people who care passionately about the health of our communities and the land that sustains us physically and spiritually. These are the people who will use their knowledge to put food on our tables and pass their wisdom onto future generations.

"Today our food is grown, harvested, processed, packaged, distributed, shipped, and marketed by a small number of giant corporations. Folks in cities have no idea where their food comes from. The small family farm is no longer economically viable. Rural communities bear the brunt of noxious corporate farming practices. The money that urban populations spend for food increasingly pays for industrial farming monocultures, dependent on toxic pesticides, and transportation costs for shipping our food from countries all over the world to urban supermarkets."

The land is out teacher, and the lesson is life. As our population moves into cities and out of rural areas and urban sprawl eats up our agricultural reserves, we are in danger of destroying life itself. If "eco-density" means destroying the green spaces in urban environments, it is not a viable concept. The University of British Columbia can preserve UBC Farm as it is to set an international standard for integrating farms into cities and preserving our quality of life. On the other hand, you could choose to aid in the destruction of the social and ecological fabric of this city. What kind of legacy will you leave behind? How do you want to be remembered?

"Imagine vital exchanges across generations and beautiful places where people gather.Urban life is at its most vibrant when people from various parts of the world bring together their music, food, cultural systems, and religious expressions. All of these make for cities that manifest the strength and brilliance of the human garden."

All quotes are from Just, Green, and Beautiful Cities by Carl Anthony, director of the Ford Foundation's Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative.
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1266)

Oh How I Love Seedlings

Announcing:
Cornerfarm@Cornershop
Saturday May 10, 2008

Artists will present a show of innovative container gardens. Seedball workshops for the whole family; marigolds, broccoli, gailan, and other delights at reasonable prices. This show and sale is a community fundraising event. The money will be split between two projects: Lois Klassen's Comforter Art Action and the Simon Fraser Elementary School Garden. More details TBA!!!

Suddenly Sunshine

UBC Farm in April

How You Can Support UBC Farm

If you have time to write letters in support of UBC Farm, please note the following information:

Important Food Security Workshop on the Future of UBC Farm -Please Register ASAP

Over the following weeks UBC will be making a decision about the future of Vancouver's last working farm - the UBC Farm (and Centre for Sustainable Food Systems.) The UBC Farm is a unique asset to the city and region. It provides students and the broader community the opportunity to learn hands-on about how changes in the way food is produced and distributed are a key piece in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mitigating climate change, and in creating healthy local communities and economies.

To see the kind of innovative programs that UBC Farm offers from school garden programs, to an urban Aboriginal community kitchen, to a student-run farmer's market, to apprenticeships in organic agriculture, to a diverse array of research, please check out their website:

http://www.landfood.ubc.ca/ubcfarm

How to Get Involved:

UBC Campus Planning will be holding a workshop (possibly in April or May) on food security and South Campus (where UBC Farm is located). It appears that this will be the only opportunity for the public to have input on the future of UBC Farm before UBC Campus Planning releases proposed options for the future development of South Campus. The person to contact to register for the workshops ASAP is Joe Stott. His number is 604.827.5157. If they tell you that the workshops are full, you may want to suggest that they make them available to more people.

Friends of the Farm meetings take place every Tuesday night at 6 pm in the Student Union Building at UBC in room 211. All are encouraged to attend. You can check out the Friends of the Farm website at: http://www.ams.ubc.ca/clubs/friendsubcfarm/Site/Home.html

Finally, if you would like to tell the President of UBC, the Board of Governors, Campus Planning and Metro Vancouver about your support for the UBC Farm, please write them a letter at:

Stephen J. Toope
President and Vice-Chancellor
Office of the President
The University of British Columbia
6328 Memorial Road
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2

Nancy Knight
Associate Vice President Campus & Community Planning
The University of British Columbia
102 - 2210 West Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4

The UBC Board of Governors
c/o Reny Kahlon, Acting Secretary
6328 Memorial Road Vancouver, V6T 1Z2

UBC/GVRD Joint Committee
c/o Paulette Vetleson,
Corporate Secretary
4330 Kingsway, Burnaby, V5H 4G8

Dr Murray Isman
Dean & Professor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems
The University of British Columbia
2357 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4


And it would be great if you could send one to the farm for their records, too:

UBC Farm
The University of British Columbia
2357 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
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Mermaid Skin

LOL! In the original photo I do not have green skin! The mermaid dress is on its way to Winnipeg and we are packing up the rest of our things to prepare for our trip. I alternate between feeling ready and feeling panicked. I have been rehearsing in between the number of other things I have to do in a day and I'm tired of multi-tasking to the max. Once we actually arrive in The Peg things will be more focussed. I am really trying to physicalize the text now, trying to get as much choreographed as I can. I like to have a clear physical map of the piece, and I am beginning to be more emotionally connected to it. It's like feeling the nerves beginning to join up to new skin.

I was able to finally read Sue Monk Kidd's Mermaid Chair and thoroughly enjoyed it. She talks about a mermaid saint worshiped in a church in Cornwall that inspired the story. Before St. Senara's conversion, she was a Celtic princess called Asenora. Wouldn't it be fun to go see the original mermaid chair in the little church in Cornwall! Apparently the chair itself is connected with the myth of the Mermaid of Zenor who seduced a member of the church choir and carried him off to the sea. Well when I was a girl, it was a woman in the choir who seduced the United Church minister and led him off to godknowswhere. I knew she was a dangerous woman by the way she dangled her ankle bracelet under the table at the Chinese Café.

Tagged, not Bagged

I've been tagged by Recipes for Trouble to tell five things about myself.

1) I just watched The Darjeeling Limited, and although I loved the set dec and the scenery, I thought the movie itself was quite thin, which is a common complaint of mine these days. What ever happened to sub-plots?

2) I love mystery novels and Louise Penny is my new favourite. She's Canadian, and her novels are set in a fictional village in the Eastern Townships. Judging by her main character, I'd guess she's a big fan of P.D. James.

3) I think James McAvoy is the best actor I've seen in a long time. He doesn't let his own ego get in the way of the role. He has a physical finesse that is uncommon in a screen actor. He uses a method of emotional restraint that gives his characters a rich inner life. Oh, and did I mention he's HOT? He makes hot flashes dangerous!!!! I have a special place in my heart for hunky Glaswegians.

4) I love cats but my boys don't want a cat in the house. So sad.

5) I am very passionate about the preservation of natural prairie, organic farming, the agricultural land reserve, and rural culture.