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Babushka
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 2121
I'm inline at the Good Samaritan Rummage Sale - Early, this is not one to miss. I was here at 7:15 AM, the sale starts at 9:00 AM, my early arrival guarantees me about position 50 in line, even accounting for the "filling" that goes on as friends join friends ahead of you.
There's no worries today, I know all the dealers in line and only one or two are of any threat to me, the rest are idle treasure hunters who show up at every sale then disappear. I know the competition.
And I've brought the coffee to propitiate the gods, hand one to the book fairy and a couple to random strangers, my karma is secure.
I recognize many of the faces from the preceding rummage sale. This event, it has it's regulars.
At 8:30 I see an old woman, stocky, short, limping, classical Russian Babushka heading towards the sale. She's limping, she marches into the line some 10 people before me and works her way towards the front, then stands at attention, left hand behind her back. I don't see her interacting with the other customers, there's no indication that she's found her granddaughter or grandson or group of seniors friends, she's on her own.
It looks to me for all the world as if she's butted into line, and I'm dead pissed off. Bad enough that people claim "friendship" and butt into line some 10 or 20 places early despite being late, but this woman can't even claim that.
But she's old, maybe late 70's, early 80's, and so I daren't say a thing.
I go for a cigarette, it's implicit that my position will be held by the rest of the line, I meet a vendor I'm familiar with.
"Her? She does that every year. A couple of years I tried to tell her to go to the back of the line, she tells me she's sick, I tell her then she shouldn't be here...."
She's still here. Her age is the antidote to waiting in line like the rest of us, she's used the "sickness" excuse how many years in a row to get pole-position on the best garage sale in the city. But what can you say? Start an argument, try to pitch her to the back of the line and you'll be expelled.
I can't wait until I'm old....
Metropolis
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 2092
Inspired by "Midnight In Paris" I've tracked down a masterpiece from the 20's - Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Now I know that - to modern tastes- it's overacted, a little extreme, but look at the effects - the theme, the facial expressions -all this for the 1920's!
It is amazing. And if you can't read the German subtitles, well, it doesn't matter, the film explains (for this 10 minutes at least) itself. Marvelous.
Midnight in Paris
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1961
Written and Directed by Woody Allen, starring Owen Wilson, a charming and romantic look at one writer's discovery of the Paris of his dreams and imagination. To give away more might be to spoil it, so simply - a light film, perfectly suited for that first date with the English or Arts major you've been dying to ask out.
Whitehorse
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2682
We find a hotel, not so easy given how long it's been since we've showered, and the daughter was absolutely devoured by the Black Flies in Burns Lake, so we're both covered in scabs and dirt. We end up in a small hotel across from the Macbride Museum, an absolutely perfect local museum of Whitehorse History that's stuffed with Native Artifacts, Taxidermy Animals and Tools from the old gold rush, the original Sam McGee's Cabin.
After exploring the museum we head on down to find the Visitor's Information Center - another World Class facility, with information on pretty much everything you could possibly want to do in the Yukon, displays of Animals and the Precious Gems and Minerals of the area - geodes filled with powery blue crystals, giant smokey quart crystals, emeralds and other finds. And, ever helpful the attendant photocopies us a guidebook to the rocks and minerals of the area, tomorrows plans are already made....
There are pictures of the Dempster Highway, which runs past the Arctic Circle to Inuvik. We're so close, and for another 10, 12 hours drive we could be there....but time on this vacation is limited, and already we've spent far too much time in the car. Next Year.
We walk around the main streets, brightly painted storefronts, it reminds one somewhat of Banff, only a Banff that's infinitely more remote than Banff is, far less "commercial" and much more - well, authentic. It's attracted it's share of tourists, to be sure, but they're the more hardened adventure tourists and wilderness lovers, those here hoping for bigger adventures and off the trail ruggedness that Banff doesn't offer.
I like it.
After dinner we curl up in the hotel room and watch TV. This is a treat I get only every other year, never having it hooked up at home.
London is burning, there are the riots and rioters tearing apart the neighborhoods, Anchors and commentators wondering "Why" when they really should be asking "What's taken them so long?". There's "Billy the Exterminator" - a surreal "reality" show that centers upon an illiterate family of exterminators in Americas South East, the staged wrestling of alligators and snakes, squashing of wasps, absolutely ridiculous. There are other shows, like "Canadian Pickers" and the standard forensic documentaries, YTV, rubbish, and finally it's time for sleep.
***
The next day we head off to go rockhounding. The guidebook copied for us suggests a few locations to go looking for rocks, we settle on the Geodes about Carmacks region and head off. The digging is good and we turn up a few rocks, the drive is absolutely stunning and the road beacons you on and on but we have to turn back, we camp that night beside Fox Lake, a beautiful specimen of Azurite left by an earlier traveler on the picnic table. And no sooner do we begin setting up the tent then it begins to blow and rain.
And rain.
Cooking dinner the pots fill with the rain, we crawl into the tent but the wind blows the fly back and the rain gets inside, all night it pours.
The next morning, still pouring, cold, windy, we pack up and head back to Whitehorse.
***
We explore more. The MacBride Museum is fabulous, and they have a map inlaid with plaster gold nuggets that show the amount of gold that was taken from each claim on the local gold bearing creeks. We take the trolley through town past the homeless encampment on the city hall's front lawn to the SS Klondike, a perfectly preserved steamboat from the day. We look at the bust of Jack London on the main street, grab a coffee at the Starbucks - and here I must note that the new gold rush is in both the Starbucks and Tim Hortons, which duel it out across the street from one another - every time you enter or pass, at any time of day, there's a line up of patrons waiting for their coffee. You can't print money that fast.
We check out a couple of the local art galleries, they're fine, then have dinner at one of the more "local" places.
The town is busy. Small, but they've done a good job of keeping the local character. There's the character bars, the "99", there are enough distractions to keep us busy for the day.
It's a great town, and I have a feeling that it will boom - the wilderness that surrounds it is indeed wilderness, there are countless unexplored mountains and creeks, and if I had the money for real estate I would spend it here, buy up properties downtown and restore them, there will be soon another boom in precious and rare earth metals and prices will skyrocket.
And that's Whitehorse.
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