Last night I attended the opening night of the musical theatre production of Seussical at Stellys High School. Silas, my 16 year old grandson, played General Genghis Kahn Schmitz who was a Who. I watched him (and all the kids) come alive. He sung. He danced. He acted out his very strange part as if General Genghis Kahn Schmitz was a thing…a real thing.
I recommend Seussical to everyone and anyone for its brilliant treatment of childhood/teenage concerns. We are often so pedantic and teachy and tedious with kids. This production reminds us to be creative and colourful and humorous even if the issues are challenging.
The most exceptional part, of what was a brilliant evening for me, happened after the show. The cast came out from behind the curtain and mingled with the audience. Their hearts were so, so, so full. Their smiles were so, so, so genuine. Their bodies were so, so, so bold and confident.
If we are our experiences, and I believe that is all we are, then after last night those kids will never be the same. Their high school drama gig will always be a light within them.
A note of amazement!!!
Forty-five kids took part in staging the show. Twelve kids played in the orchestra (for 2 hours straight). Twenty-three kids were in the cast. Then there was the teacher support—director, choreographer, music director and conductor, set design and construction, vocal coach, program, media… Then there was community support for things I haven’t thought about yet.
Be mindful folks when you criticize schools. Be slow when you judge teenagers. Take a break from the bleak, nasty critique that is so common in our world. There is so much wonderful happening.
Here we go again. It’s election time in BC. 2024. The fall if we are lucky. Earlier if we aren’t.
I’m not going to lie. It’s been a long long haul for my kid. He’s been at the political table since his oldest child was born.
His first election was when he joined Central Saanich council in 2008…the first First Nations person elected in the district. Once he knew how fundamental the provincial government was to municipal governments he decided to move on to the BC Legislature.
He was the young guy when he started. It’s Adam’s birthday today. He’s 48 years old. He’s not the young person anymore…he’s mentoring the young people now.
It’s a strange thing for a mother to say that her son makes a really good politician. I think politicians are the least liked professionals in the western world. But he’s a good person. Really good. Yet he’s still well suited for the job and by that I mean he truly likes people. He’s got a sharp mind and a soft heart. He doesn’t dream about being powerful. He has always dreamed about making a difference…for the better. He isn’t interested in having a following. He’s interested in inspiring people to make their own difference.
The past few years have been tough. COVID challenged everyone. Housing. Climate. AI. Mental health. Opioids. There are no easy answers although everyone wants someone to blame.
Who would want to be a leader in such conditions?
Adam. He’s still dreaming of making a difference…for the better.
The Olsen grandchildren and Tex and I did Jesus Christ Super Star at the Royal Theatre in Victoria. It was an extravaganza. The story of Jesus was told using astonishing dancers and brilliant singers. But it took the kids more than half the show to figure out what was going on, which came as a bit of a shock to me. I thought everyone would know the story.
The central theme of my young life was the story told in the musical. Whether I could hear the words or not I knew exactly what was going on, including the nuances and vague inferences. My grandkids knew Jesus had something to do with Christmas and they picked up the reference to him being the King of the Jews but they didn’t know much else.
As it goes in the Olsen family so it goes with many, if not most, western families. Who sends their kids to Sunday School these days? Who teaches Sunday School? The modern Jesus is decked with boughs of holly and reduced to pleasantries on Christmas cards.
The kids didn’t know what the fuss was about Jesus. I told them that the story was important if for no other reason than that he is by far the most famous human being in all history. And, of course, the production had fabulous music from the 70s and what’s not to love about that.
But it was more about just being there. Absorbing. Letting yourself be part of the spectacle.
What was most exciting about taking eight young people to the show was being with them as they experienced exceptional, over-the-top, art.
The joy of art and transcendent human expression is as much a part of being human as is the monstrous and imbecilic demonstrations of human behaviour we are seeing elsewhere. The real brilliance of being human is that the monstrous and the beautiful exist at the same time. The one does not exclude the other. It is our challenge to be able to experience both–not to be darkened and depressed by the one or naively animated by the other. It is all, at the same time, what it is to be human.
My wish for the world, for my country, for my community, for my family is a moment, an hour, a day, if you can manage it, of rest, of peace, of freedom from whatever troubles our hearts.
Saying Merry Christmas doesn’t work for me. It feels radical. Perhaps even more so than saying the f word. It’s not the current effort at banishing exclusivity that makes it hard for me. If you want to spread merriness and if you want to call this time of year Christmas that’s perfectly fine with me.
I struggle to get my tongue around Merry Christmas because it was forbidden in the world I lived in until I was in my late 30s. In our sense of otherness saying Merry Christmas was not only banal it was pagan, anti-Jesus and anti the one and only true God.
You don’t easily get over those sorts of prohibitions.
It was forbidden as a way to denote our exclusivity from the “world”. We, my family and the tiny church we belonged to, were not of the world. Shunning pagan holidays such as Christmas was one way we could demonstrate our faith. We shunned a lot of other things as well but there was no better way to drum up a conversation about the “truth” (that’s how we identified people—you were either in the truth—that was us—or out of the truth—that was everyone else) than to explain to people why we didn’t believe in celebrating Christmas.
Shunning all things Christmas was also a way my family and church instilled in me as a child that I was different. I was chosen. No Christmas carols, no Christmas concerts, no Christmas trees or bells or garlands, no letters after Christmas thanking someone for a Christmas present and absolutely no Merry Christmases. That meant I had to tell my teachers that I wasn’t allowed to colour Christmas trees or pictures of the manger. The teacher told the class the Christmas pictures were against my religion. In grade three there was another girl who was also given alternative pictures to colour. The teacher told us it was because she was Jewish.
The Christmas restrictions forced me, from the time I was a little girl, to publicly confess my difference. I don’t remember fighting with my parents about it or even wishing I could join in the Christmas celebrations. Strange as it sounds I just accepted that my world was different. And yes, I know what you are thinking, I thought it was better. Our exclusivity didn’t just make us different it made us better (another topic for another blog…but after leaving the church distinguishing between difference and betterness was the hardest thing to figure out.)
In grade seven I remember pleading with my parents to allow me to sing in the Christmas concert. It was 1967 and I was a precocious girl—old before my time. I “just had to” go to the concert because my best friend, Karen, had stolen cigarettes from her father and some grade eight boys were going to be hanging around after the concert. Tony, a boy with long hair who read his father’s Playboy magazines would be waiting for us outside.
My parents gave in. They said yes.
I was the youngest of five children. I’m sure they were tired and bored with arguing with us by the time I became a teenager. As a result I won a lot of arguments my older siblings lost.
I was almost quivering with anticipation. But I had to sing the Christmas carols first.
I remember balancing on a bench, standing almost dead center in the choir. I looked out at the auditorium. Everyone’s parents were there except mine. I think I was thankful.
When the pianist played the preamble to O Christmas tree I didn’t know what to do. I had only pretended to sing the words in choir practice but now there I was. It felt like everyone’s eyes were on me. I couldn’t keep my lips closed. If I lip-synced my friends who surrounded me would know. They would hear. Nothing. The words to O Christmas tree were a mouthful. They got stuck in my throat. Silver Bells, Jingle Bells and Sleigh ride were easier. I was able to get through Oh Come all Ye Faithful and even Silent Night but I knew what was coming. The classic Christmas concert wrap up tune. We Wish You a Merry Christmas. It was almost too much for my inexperienced, unsophisticated twelve-year-old self. Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic but I think it felt as bad as if I had been standing on the stage shouting “F*!k, F*!k, F*!k.”
That was fifty-six years ago. It’s been more than 30 years since I’ve attended the church. At most Christmas events I still feel like a bit of an outsider.
I’ve spent the past decades unpacking the debilitating idea that because you believe something you need to demonstrate your uniqueness and prove your rightness to the world. I’m uneasy with loud displays of identity and positional exceptionalism. The harder the lines we draw the closer we get to the problem of ‘different than’ being confused with ‘better than’. I am currently appalled at how righteously people defend beliefs as ludicrous as some of the ones I was taught as a child.
This holiday season I am enjoying singing songs like Imagine, Let it be and Give Peace a Chance. The words feel more soothing and there’s joy in that. Maybe they could replace O Little Town of Bethlehem and Little Drummer Boy and become our new holiday anthems.
Perhaps the most beautiful part of the Lodge is the garden. We have been told that Gerhardt Rehm designed it. He was a well-known landscape architect who also created many exceptional gardens in Victoria. We still don’t know the whole story but there is no doubt the garden has been touched by many loving and ambitious hands.
The Lodge rests on a hill overlooking the garden. Every time I walk down the stairs or a guest stands at one of the bay windows we see the remarkable landscape. But in spite of Gerhardt’s artistry and all the hard work of previous gardeners the place had been neglected for several years and had turned into a messy jumble of overgrown and untended foliage.
Looking closer I realized it wasn’t just messy. The garden had been colonized. A full hillside of English ivy—up the trees and down the banks—scotch broom, Daphne, holly, bamboo and blackberries. Even the beautiful little wild geraniums and fragrant morning glory had wound their way around every rock and fern.
Gardening has given me time to think about colonization…the choking and strangling…the taking over. It’s not that colonizers are in and of themselves nasty creatures. In fact, they are beautiful. But they are not satisfied with inhabiting their own territory. They have invaded the whole garden, creeping underground and dominating the soil so nothing else can grow.
At first I got a bit panicked. I had dreams of Sleeping Beauty. If I didn’t wake up the thickets would become so dense I would be choked.
Some plants I’m containing…English ivy, because it is doing a good job of covering a bank…blackberries, because they make excellent jam and pies. The Daphne, holly and scotch broom are gone (for now) as are some of the wild geraniums and fragrant morning glory (they are sweet and hopefully somewhat innocuous).
It’s the bamboo that really got the colonization message through to me. Apparently Gerhardt loved bamboo and many Victoria residences are now decolonizing their gardens along with me. This is not clumping bamboo, the decent, polite kind that remains contained in its own space. This is running bamboo that doesn’t stop. It’s greedy.
I cut down a stand in a gulley along the property line about 4 feet X 20 feet…some had grown 15 feet tall. Gone. But the trunks are impenetrable and the tubers are 2 inches round and those are the ones I can see. What I can’t see is that they have traveled at least thirty feet from the gulley to a small garden under a large fir tree. Bamboo, like long unruly hairs on a dog’s back, was sprouting up through the variegated bishop’s goutweed (itself an invasive species). In the two years since we have been here the bamboo has gotten thicker and thicker.
After clearing out the goutweed I spent two days with a pick and shovel pulling giant clumps of bamboo roots. Again, it’s what you don’t see. The roots were 10 Xs what appeared on the surface. Not to get too metaphorical but bamboo is systemic…the problem isn’t what you can easily see. Snipping the spindly hairs will get you nowhere. The problem is the way it infiltrates the substrata and leaves the soil barren and dry making it hard for natural species to survive.
I have almost exhausted the colonizer metaphor but not quite.
I became a warrior woman. Digging, lifting, cutting, pulling until I had no muscle strength left. I Googled how to eradicate bamboo and after every helpful method there was the same message…repeated digging, lifting, cutting, pulling required. Figure out a way to live with it. The colonizer is a permanent resident.
Now I’m wondering how we could have avoided our western brand of colonization. I wish there had been a way to control the first sailors who eyed this great territory and wanted to possess it. I think China and Russia had a good idea when they set up traders’ quarters in their cities and confined outsiders to those areas. They wanted the goods but they didn’t want the takeover.
Maybe it’s not too late to think of other ways to inhabit space, other ways to imagine ownership, other ways to use resources because the absolute truth is that we do not own the land. It’s not ours. It never will be ours. We are caretakers of it until we are covered by it and forgotten. Don’t get me started on the “return to the earth” metaphor.
Photo thanks to Bart Wentink, a guest at the Lodge from Houston Texas
I used to think I was relevant. I had gritty things to say about pertinent current topics. I knew what I knew and I knew it was important, make-the-world-a-better-place kind of stuff. A friend once told me I was an interesting person and I believed her.
In many ways I feel that parts of me are waning. Not entirely. I hope I’m still interesting. But the gritty, pertinent, current part. Don’t take this to mean I’m looking for affirmations. I simply mean that who I am in the world and the role I play has changed. Dramatically.
I retired.
I wasn’t forced to. I choose to.
The reason I choose to retire was exactly what I’m talking about here. I had offered my field everything I could. I had squeezed myself dry. What Sylvia could do for on-reserve housing (my field of work, study, expertise, experience…in general my life’s passion) had been done. There are still side jobs and I’m happy to do them. But my life no longer circles around and around my work. And better still. Other people are doing the job. As well, or better than I did it. Not better because they have more commitment, or smarts, or passion or fire in their bellies but better because they are more current. Better because they can take the thing where it needs to go. We share one foot. The one situated in the present. My other foot is in the past. Their other foot is in the future. And that is how it should be.
I am becoming less interested in the content matter that I have stuffed in my head and more interested in the wisdom I can pull out of my experiences. I know it sounds heavy and more than a little self-congratulatory calling myself wise. It’s a characteristic that should only be ascribed to someone by someone else. But it is only wisdom that interests me these days.
The sum, aggregate, distillation of a life of inspiration and insight—wisdom. The words, touch, music, art and everyday acts of doing—sharing. There is no wisdom without sharing.
Ferron, of course Ferron, brilliantly put how many of us older women feel these days.
“My best guess for me is that I was on the train and then got off…to pee, get an ice cream, buy a book. And the train left. And I can’t catch up.”
We don’t need to run after the train. We can catch the next one. Or we can stroll down the road until our new place in life catches up with us.
All of us crones–the old girls who “have found our voices (or who are looking for our voices) and who know that silence is consent” (from Jean Shinoda Bolen) can do it together at the second, soon to be fantastic, Ferron writing workshop taking place October 26-29 at the Saturna Lodge. Check it out.
Happy anniversary, my love. Six years ago Tex McLeod and I got married. We had a wonderful party. Outside. At the art school just up the road from our home. Family and friends ate, drank, danced, hugged, laughed and enjoyed a loving day. That was it. Our wedding was love.
Neither Tex nor I remembered that today was our anniversary. Janet Dunnett, a dear friend who attended the wedding, sent me a message. Recelebrating. Thanks Janet I’m not sure if either one of us would have remembered.
Our lives are still full of love. Family love. Our eight dynamic grandchildren no longer range in age from 1 to 20. More than half of them are young adults full of more love for their old grandparents than I could ever have thought possible.
Friends love. Old friends, like Janet, have become more important. New friends have shown up. And how sweet it is to make new friends at our age.
And then there’s puppy love. We got Piper 6 months after our wedding. Odelia and Neekah said they couldn’t take care of a dog and would we like her? Hesitantly we said yes we’d like her. We had no idea how deeply we would love our curly haired little dog.
Days like anniversaries remind us that we aren’t in control of our lives. We didn’t know what was in store for us. Our plans were wild possibilities at the most. Hopes and dreams at the least.
You’d think by our age we would know how to make decisions. But sometimes I think we are no better at it than our teenage grandsons. We’ve made some good and some bad decisions in our short marriage. I never imagined I would be making breakfast and changing sheets at a Lodge on Saturna Island. But what started out perhaps as not such a good decision turned into a wonderful new adventure.
And then there was COVID. Long-term COVID. Two new hips. Feet that don’t work. One of our new friends said “Tex you are like an old car I used to have.” Sort of funny. But not really.
Today we are celebrating Tex and Sylvia love. Thanks to Janet we are able to remember. Thanks for her words “I hope the summer manifested its heart to you both, and didn’t wear you down.”
The summer was good to us. Our feet hurt but our hearts are full. It has been a good ride, Tex McLeod. You is an amazing gift. I am so privileged to be able to share my life with my person. The one who has my back and stays by my side no matter what. That’s love.
I am the first Olsen girl (from my little Olsen family) to get a Barbie. In preparation for going to the Barbie movie, Emily, my daughter-in-law, bought it for me from the Thrift Store. It cost $4.00. The doll’s dirty blond hair is a mess and I don’t know what the designers were thinking when they made her outfit—mud-brown, fake corduroy pants and a dark blue, blousy, superhero top. Not pink. Not glitzy. Not fun. Not attractive. And, they didn’t do a good job of applying her make-up—heavy on the eyes, too blue and smudgy lipstick.
But it’s her legs. They are about 1-½ times the length of the rest of her body put together, on her tip toes of course. My Barbie, like every Barbie, is in a perpetual stance of trying to look over the fence.
I didn’t know, until I watched the movie that flat feet or feet in flats or worse, in Birkenstocks, were Barbie defying.
I don’t know what to do with my Barbie doll. She’s too small to knit her a sweater although she really does need to get out of those clothes.
My mother never let me own a Barbie. She bought me Barbie’s little sister, Skipper, for my 10th birthday (not blow up boob Skipper–that might have been intriguing). I don’t remember asking for a doll nor do I recall ever playing with it.
When I sent an email to the females in my family and asked if anyone ever had a Barbie my youngest daughter, Heather, responded, “Mom, in what world are you living? You are my mother. Remember? You never let us have Barbies.”
In the family spirit, to the third generation, my daughters and daughter-in-law never let their daughters have Barbies either. However, even while missing a relationship with this cultural icon, most of us still have body issues and measure the length of our legs against Barbie’s unachievable benchmark.
Twelve Olsens and friends attended the Barbie movie the other night…grandsons, granddaughters…I didn’t want them to miss the gender critique, the current cultural analysis of the patriarchy and its outcomes. I want to hear what they have to say.
I am still mulling it over and as yet am not quite sure what to say for myself about the movie. I’m wondering how, in 2023, the movie got away with the starkly differentiated male/female portrayal of human sexuality/asexuality. I’m wondering why there hasn’t been a Karbie or Ben–at least a mention.
I’m still thinking about the wrap up scene—Barbie visiting a gynaecologist. I can’t find any movie reviewers who mention this part of the film but I think it’s pivotal…when the dolls get real and get genitals Barbie got the vagina. It’s so clear-cut. It’s strangely out of sync with the open-ended gender discussions and struggles my grandchildren are currently experiencing.
I was struck by how terrifyingly similar the glitzy, pink, plastic, fake Barbie world imitated the concrete, glass, shiny, glitzy real world. I’m thinking about how the line between the fake and the real world is getting blurred and how we are finding it increasingly difficult to know the difference.
I haven’t heard from my grandsons yet but two of my granddaughters cried.
Madison, who is 20, said:
“One part that made me cry was when they talked about body image. I’ve had so many issues with it all my life. Then I cried and cried when the mother was listing off the struggles of being a woman. I’ve never heard that topic being acknowledged like that. It caught me off guard.
“At the end when they played clips of a girl’s life and the narrator told us to “close your eyes and feel” I could feel my life going by so fast…almost out of control. I want to slow it down and cherish it. I couldn’t stop sobbing.”
Yetsa, who is 26, put it this way:
“I cried for a couple of reasons, mostly about being a woman and how hard that can be. But we already knew that. I cried because I’m sensitive and cry at everything. But I think it was really just about being a woman. It is exhausting, especially for young girls.
“Men have it easier. They are stomping around the world, fighting with each other, while women are trying to hold it all together for everyone. I cried because of all these things and the world itself is seriously something that drains me daily.
“I was crying because little girls since forever and for the foreseeable future are growing up in a world that doesn’t make them feel very good about themselves. That makes me sad.
“But then it’s not just little girls. The thought of how many people are feeling that way…could be a little girl or a mom…even a 65 year-old man…makes me sad. Everyone is carrying a lot of weight from the world. The movie brought all that out in me.”
Good work director, Greta Gerwig. Good work Hollywood for giving us something we obviously need think about…deeply.
Madison Olsen and Nate Harris at the 3rd Annual Indigenous Music Festival photos by Colin Smith Takes Pics
I have been searching for words. I missed the concert. I wish I could have heard the sound of their voices but I smile when I look at the pictures. At first the only word that came to mind was joy. They feel it. Even their photos are making a joyful sound.
These are my kids—Nate, my best friend and sister-in-law Diane’s grandson, and Madison, my granddaughter.
Diane passed away last year, but she is smiling as well. Her word is medicine.
I know because she used to say to me, “Tell Madison I love her. Tell her to never stop singing. Nate too. I tell him all the time. These kids and their music are our medicine.”
“It makes my heart feel good,” she would say with her hands on her chest.
If Diane were here, we would talk about how joy is good medicine.
The 3rd Annual Indigenous Music Festival was the first time Madison and Nate performed together but it won’t be the last.
A special thanks to Colin, the photographer. Your art is joy. And good, good medicine.
On July 1st Saturna Island hosted its 73rd Lamb BBQ. I am going to make the challenge that it is one of the most exceptional Canada Day parties in the country. And here’s why. The most remote Southern Gulf Island accessible by ferry has only 400-something permanent residents, yet at a time when most communities lament the absence of volunteers Saturna gathered over 220 people, young and old, many of who began planning and organizing months in advance to put on a feast for their friends, neighbours and visitors.
This year 27 lamb carcasses were trucked from the Campbell Farm on Saturna to the Community Hall. Each one was split open and “racked” on a 7 foot thick, hand-made iron stake with a cross bar. With just-cut vine maple branches and stainless steel wire the lambs were secured to the stakes and ready for delivery to the BBQ site where the fire had been going since 4:30 in the morning. For Priscilla Ewbank, who has been roasting the lambs since the 1970s, the preparation is an act of respect. “To do it well, to get the lambs racked up just right for maximum enjoyment and use of these sentient beings, is a good honest skill. Each of us was taught by someone else who cared to do the job right and to pass on the skills and reverence.”
More than 1700 people attended the celebration. Saturna-ites served over 1100 meals of BBQ lamb, rice, salad and island-made rolls. If lamb wasn’t to your taste you could have a Saturna veggie burger, a hamburger, fish tacos or a hot dog. There was popcorn and ice cream cones, a wine tent and a beer garden, book sales and crafts. There were games for kids of all ages, a tug-a-war, nail driving competition and live music and dancing.
People came on the ferry in their cars, by foot, on their bikes and motorcycles. They came on the Aqualink (a new passenger ferry service linking the Gulf Islands) and the seaplane and on more than 160 private boats, which moored in Winter Cove, across the street from the BBQ site.
Robin Robinson attended her first Lamb BBQ in 1951. She was 8 years old. Her family spent their summers on Saturna and the BBQ was a highlight of her stay. “It was so much fun,” she remembered. “There were races and games and at some point there was even a pig diapering competition.” She missed the celebration when she moved away but now she’s back on the west coast she won’t miss again.
It all started, as the story goes, when, after a bad winter, a farmer on the island sold off his sheep and donated the lambs to the community for a BBQ. They charged $.50 a dinner. The money they raised supported services like the women’s club and fire brigade.
The tradition continues. Not just the tradition of the Lamb BBQ but the tradition of giving back to the community. It wasn’t only about having a good time. The BBQ was and still is the major fundraiser for the island. Saturna Island looks after itself. And that’s why I think this is the greatest Canada Day celebration.
Saturna’s party is an act of generosity, from Saturna inhabitants to their friends, their neighbours and to anyone fortunate enough to find their way to the island on July 1st. The visitors show their appreciation by showing up and supporting the islanders.
As relative newcomers to the island my husband and I quickly came to understand that living on Saturna is about reciprocity. Those of us privileged enough to reside in this magnificent place know that its secret is in the give and take. Everyone brings something to the table.
As one visitor said, “This BBQ is a stunning demonstration of what everyone is looking for these days…the security of knowing that when we really need each other the community knows how to mobilize and look after itself.”
