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Morning, the car show, I’m up-and-at-em by 8:00 AM, need cigarettes, groceries, walking down Baker, the street - from one end to the other, and a good many of the side streets, are filled with vintage trucks, roadsters, hot-rods, even a few new cars. I've seen it but never really stopped to take it in, work always interfered. This car show, it’s a community thing, all the vehicle owners have set up around their car, camping chairs, coolers, coffee's, the cars, gleaming with bright paint and wax, every owner eager to talk about their pride-and-joy, this is a boon for business, millions of dollars in a couple of days, collectors plates from Idaho, Montana, Washington, Ontario, further even, the shops, cafe’s, hotels all full, streets full of shoppers.
I get my groceries, cigarettes, head home again, eat breakfast, finish cleaning the bathroom, then make lunch.
Then to the thrift shop where I find an appalling shelf, all function, no style, white veneered particle board, but I need one, my art supplies spread out over the living room floor in a 10 foot radius from my chair have grown to be a bit much, the place, once again, is a mess. After lunch I clean it up. And breathe a sigh of relief. The shelf's ugliness is largely concealed by the abundance of supplies I’ve heaped it with, watercolours, gouache, oil pastels, pen, ink, mixed media - paper, maps, passports, foreign currency, envelopes, acrylic, oils, mediums, stamps: duty-paid, postage, lottery tickets, etc, etc.
This done it's time now to read my book - Hiroshima by John Hersey. An assignment by my daughter who’s English course relies on an intelligent interpretation of and essay on said material. This reading merely so we can have an intelligent conversation upon the subject.
After which it's time for a shower, shave, and the Variety Show at the Capital…
Not the show I'd hoped for, but what I'd expected. You recognize everyone from the community, the banker, the MC, another person of finance, an actress, too many others to list. these are the people in your neighbourhood, and most of them in one way or another are in the theatre…
The lobby filled with snacks, everyone saying ‘If I knew I wouldn’t have eaten dinner”, there are salad rolls, chips & salsa, bean dip, guacamole, peanut sauce, a charcuterie of sorts, sausage, smoked meat, cheese, lots of food. I didn’t eat dinner and so make free on the buffet.
Milling and hob-nobbing, meet the authors, B.B is there, needs a drink, is short on cash having just published her second volume of poetry. And R&A are there, 85+ years old, neighbours from the old Beggs Road Vacation house, and R has a new book out, reminisces of the old life in the valley, these are the pioneers, the people that made this place great, in the 70’s with all their free-love, draft-dodging stick-it-to-the man communes & pot-growing, the old timers, and T.W. as well has a new book of poetry out…
Just keeping up with reading the local authors is a chore…
The variety show, a good natured promotion for the upcoming next season, the Xmas Panto, coming musical, theatrical, comedy, the summer youth camps that see every local youth indoctrinated into the world of Drama, as small towns go this is the town.
Then home, there's a concert in rail town, old-style rock&roll, “BC-DC”, 500 people according to a neighbour who went, loud, in tune with the largely out-of-town car show audience, through closed windows I can still here it blaring, and when it wraps up at 11:00 it's time for bed.
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And, having come across a few pats of watercolours at the thrift shop I've turned my hands to a new medium.
Watch the YouTube videos, seems straightforward enough, should be a cinch.
How many times have I said this?
Anyways, putting the "mixed" into mixed media, with mixed results. More largely failures and slight (accidental) successes.
Slowly, slowly...
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This morning, the first of September, noticing the leaves have begun to turn and are falling from the trees.
Time to go and try and start my car.
Last night, work, slow, after work head down to the liquor store.
A bad habit, I know.
And from the alley behind the Hume there's a group of maybe 8 high school students, - slight, of slender build and height, coming out of ???
One of them recognizes me, says "hi", they've just been spelunking in the tunnels under Nelson. And I try and get details - what did they see, find, the only answer is "puddles", it sounds like no discoveries worth mentioning, merely the thrill of discovery.
This morning, coffee, this evening, work, between now and then I have to learn how to paint with watercolors. And that outlines the day...
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And this week, the kids, visiting. The Son on Sunday (Sonday), with his girlfriend, until Monday Morning, then in the afternoon the Daughter.
She wants to play Chess & Scrabble, having skipped the family reunion to be with her mother she found her poor competition, or perhaps she thought she was that good...
5 games later she was properly schooled. And not happy, but - there was a time when she was younger, and I'd let her win, and she complained that her mother had told her I was a formidable opponent but clearly that wasn't the case, and having listened to this crowing for a few minutes I took off the gloves, and now, now, it's her that needs to up her game.
This is how I know my kids will visit me when I'm old and senile and in the home, the daughter will be showing up with a Chess and Scrabble board to claim the victories she missed out on in her youth...
She took the losses relatively well, with the parting shot: "You've mastered the board games Pa, but what about your life???"
Tuesday, work double, Wednesday off, and the boy texts me, he'll be through town again in the afternoon.
My plans for the day off involved taking his car to check up on my ruby prospect, maybe do some exploring, that's ruled out, his trip to Vancouver cut short by a break in in his car, a "secure" parkade nonetheless, but - in these the darkening of days no place is secure.
I instead make some food, the daughter was sorely disappointed I hadn't cooked or planned to for her arrival, I'll remedy that, I make a tasty guacamole, cucumber-mint salsa, and Kim-Chi, all vegan, and they're glad for the fresh food, it's tasty, if I don't say so myself, but the bill - a grocery bill with no meat, vegetables only, well, it's preposterous....
And then they're off, to "Wicked Woods", a better venue than being broken into in Vancouver, and this ends the fall visit, next one probably Halloween, and time now - he having taken back what remained of his car, time now for me to go and boost mine, get myself back on the road, there's still a few weeks of summer left and many a prospect that needs my attention...
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Finally, to the experts with this seasons share of hopeful rocks.
1 - the lamproite/diamond - Geologist #1 a bit stumped, #2, the old timer, declares it to be slow-cooled basalt (possibly still lamproite) and what I took to be a diamond is in fact a ruby. This I would not have guessed, the crystal is dark against a dark background, but he seems certain, has several just like it, a jar full. Doing some research later at home later I find that the Montana Sapphires were hosted in lamproites, so it's not an impossibility. Definitely worth returning and breaking some more rocks. And there are enough lamproites around the Kootenays that I should at some point find a sapphire/ruby deposit...
2 - the blue kyanite (I thought). Pale blue, bladed texture, in pegmatic granite, some thin sections resembling aquamarine. I could get no consensus - Geo #1 thought it was beryl, #2 Slick & Slide (not).
3 - Serpentine - an attractive dark water worn rock picked up on Balfour beach. Dark green with black spots. Confirmed as serpentine.
4 - red/pink tourmaline crystals in host feldspar, again picked up on beach, lake tumbled. Identified as red/pink tourmaline crystals in host feldspar. Now, the hard part, figuring out where it came from, surely closer that Mt. Begby...
5 - dark black crystal, rusty setting, from pegmatite in Revelstoke. Remains unidentified.
6 - black slag looking piece, with vesicles and small crystals. Google lens identifies it as meteorite, but it's not (meteorites don't have vesicles), geologists agreed it wasn't slag...
And so here I am at the point where I have to figure things out for myself, because bloody hell I'm not getting a whole lot of help. That said, these old timers, if they're the competition it explains a lot...