from the Black Hills to Gaza and back to Canada then off to Israel

I found this video on Jadaliyya, an English language Arab news and culture website. I agree with them that  TED talks have their problems (the few I have seen are overwhelmingly by white professional guys in suits), but this one by Aaron Huey comes from a decolonizing perspective. Yes, he too is a white male but he actually takes a critical look at that. In their introduction to the video, Jaddaliyya links the practices of colonial settler projects, links what's happening to the Palestinians by Israel with what was done to--and continues to be done to-- the Lakota by the US, and to Indigenous peoples everywhere.

While Huey, a photographer, specifically uses contemporary photographs to inform his narration of the resistance of the Lakota to a long history of settler policies and violence, the hard questions that he raises about the role of 'wasi'chu' , Lakota for both 'non-native' and 'those who take the best part of the meat' (which has been white people and continues to include settlers of all skin colours who benefit from the dominant society's policies and methods) can be extended to Canadian setter society and other settler peoples like Israelis. 

Jadaliyya Reports states that:

Today, three days after “Thanksgiving Day,” it is important to remember that in the United States, settler colonialism has been so complete, and so successful, that the world has forgotten that South Africa, Australia, and Israel are all reproductions, all approximations of the ongoing victory in the Americas. We have forgotten that people learn from each other, and that techniques and lessons of genocide have always travelled in well cut suits, paperwork, and handshakes. We have forgotten that those of us who live today in the United States, are continuing to settle native land, and that even the ability to be a politically progressive—or even radical—citizen of the United States is a wage of genocide. A reservation is a bantustan is a refugee camp is Area A is an allotment is native title is Gaza..

The Blue Purse

Sharing with you a creative non-fiction piece I wrote a few years ago.

The Blue Purse

As she turned away from her screen to tidy the kitchen, an image of the two of them crossed her mind. Razia and Ethel giggling together under the brilliant summer skies of South Africa. Sitting on a patio, no doubt. Wearing cotton, no doubt. Not a turtleneck or tights in sight. Huddled together, laughing out loud. Heads thrown back, then leaning close, the women exchanging intimacies.

"No!”

“Really.”

“Seriously. You’re kidding.”

“No, seriously. And did you know…”

Oh, under an umbrella, for sure. Their own little momentary Shangri-la under the beating down sun of Jo’burg—a bit of which came across the Atlantic this morning alongside the mangoes and soft orange kanakambra blossoms that Jyoti sent in her email.

For a moment, she felt the warmth of the South bounce off the cold choppy waves of the waters in the harbour.

A chill wind blew across the lake right up to her front door. Rarely did a warm southerly winter wind travel across Lake Superior. Often the wind was northwesterly, cold and hard as a grave in November.

The Lady of the Lake wore many garments, from choppy, bottle-green summer waters with waves that lurched and lapped, to deep blue silks flecked with bronze. At times, when She showered passersby with small, perfect crystal balls made of ice, She wore the black shimmering radiance of early winter.

But for three weeks now, only a solid grey coughed up from the shore. Today, only the narrowest band of blue-mauve broke the leaden skies hold on Nanabijou, protector of the silver harbour.

The overcast skies pressed their heavy dark rain clouds into her kitchen, and the rain beat a song of sorrow against her window.

It was one of those days.

It reminded her of the weather in Hanover that summer. A whole summer full of chill cloudy grey days. Days and days of sweaters in summer, umbrellas in schoolbags. She had never experienced such a lack of sunshine—weatherwise, that is, because certainly the warmth radiating from the sunny smiles she saw first thing in the morning lasted ‘til night dropped Her cloak. She wondered at times: how would things have been different if Hanover had had a lake and a beach and hot sun that summer?

Looking out her window, she thought back to the day they had left Austria. Samira, Fatemeh, Poopak and she had traveled by train to Vienna, where they spent three surprisingly sunny days. But the day they returned back to Hanover had started off just like today. The morning of the day they left Vienna, she and Fatemeh, who had been staying at Nagwa's small apartment at the end of the subway line, looked out the window.

It was cold and grey; the sky was cloudy and there was a strong wind. A bend-the-tree-tops kind of wind. But it wasn't raining. Yet. So she and Fatemeh looked at each other and thought, why not? They would head downtown later to meet Samira and Poopak to catch the train back to Hanover. And out they went, walking briskly arm in arm, along the rushing waters and the rustling leaves. The further they walked the more silent they became.

They strode, matching step to step. They found themselves walking along a canal of the Danube.

Suddenly, the urge to sing came upon them. Fatemeh pleaded, sing the laundry song!

"My laundry song, now?"

Yes, you said, you wanted to memorize the words and the tune and keep it in your heart for when you got back to Iran and found yourself walking alone on a downcast day. You took out your little leatherbound notebook and scribbled down the words as we sang.

"The river is flowing,

rolling and flowing,

The river is flowing

down to the sea

Mother Earth..."

"Mother Earth?"

“Yes, Mother Earth…

Mother Earth, carry me,
your child I’ll always be,
Mother Earth, carry me,
down to the sea…”

By then we’d looped around the path by the canal and reached the end of our time by the water. We crossed the street to the bus stop. As we hurried to the shelter, heavy drops of rain began to warn us of the day ahead.

A small woman, her silver grey hair neatly coiffed under a dark blue hat, stood at the other end of the bus shelter. She, too, was waiting to catch the morning bus. She was off to church, as it looked like she had her good coat on and she was wearing her good shoes and carrying her good purse. And it was Sunday. And it was early morning.

Fatemeh and I huddled together in the corner of the bus shelter, leaning close together, heads touching, whispering our song so that Fatemeh could press the tune into a corner of her mind.

Our whisperings carried above the rush of the wind, over the beat of the rain spangling the glass. I turned to the old woman in blue and said, "I hope we're not bothering you. Don’t mind us. We're just enjoying our last morning here in Vienna, despite the wind and the clouds and the rain. We're unexpectedly happy. We’re singing a song together. It’s a simple song, actually. It’s a song about the River."

"Oh no, girls. Please," she answered in delicately accented English, smiling warmly, eager for the smiles of strangers to break the grey hold of the morning. "Please, go ahead. I don't mind. Truly, you sound lovely. I was enjoying the sound of you girls singing. Don't mind me. Please,” she said, placing both her gloved hands on the clasp of her blue purse. “I was thinking to myself, how nice to hear two young women singing together on a rainy Sunday morning.”

Waving her purse in our direction and stepping away from us, she pleaded, “Please, girls. Don’t mind me. Keep singing.”

The Danube

ota ja istu: Have a seat

These two photos illustrate the article I just wrote for New World Finn. This one is of my maternal Grandmother and Grandfather in their tupa, or central room of their farmhouse in Juonikyla, Finland. They are both deceased now. As you can see, they are dressed in their Sunday best for the photo, and although the muuri is an important part of the tupa, they have positioned themselves in front of the tv. The muuri, the old big stove and heater, signifies work, work, and work, but the tv? Ahh, a bit of leisure ...

not that my Mummo had much time for leisure having birthed 17 children.

Now, as you know, if you are a regular reader of my blog, my sisters and I write an article for the quarterly New World Finn, which is published in Minnesota, US. Once a year we write a collective piece, and for the other three issues we take turns writing. Last issue, which you can read online as a sample, my sister, Katja, wrote a story about Aino. (you can also see her images of Aino that she created). The story is her retelling of Aino, the female character who Elias Lonnrot invented from other fragments for his epic The Kalevala, a collection of old Finnish runes, poems and stories.


The photo above was created by three people: Mr. Hautala who took the photo of me, my mother and my father in the late 50s, my sister Della, who made a photo copy and made it into a card, adding a frame and some text, and my sister, Katja, who digitized it and added some of her own magic to bring it alive!

My article for the next New World Finn issue is called "Ota ja istu: have a seat." That's a Finnish expression extended to someone who has dropped by; you are inviting them to sit down while you make them a cup of coffee. My article is a story about immigrating to Canada in the 50s and learning how to become middle-class Canadian in the 60s and 70s. I do that through talking about the changing rooms and furniture, the changes of what was part of the agrarian Finland we left and what came to be in Port Arthur, Canada, and how those rooms and furniture shape who we are as individuals; indeed, moving us more into individualism in the North American capitalist context. To read my story, however, you will have to buy the spring issue of the New World Finn!

Our dog Bullet

My workload has been keeping me too busy, cramming too many things into a day, so when I come across something that makes me smile, well, it's just too precious to pass by. Like this pooch with a grin and bright friendly eyes. I know it's silly, but how sweet!

This little dog looks a bit like my bird, Sydney. I know it seems improbable, but there is something in the expression, something behind the eyes that reminds me of my lovebird.

This little dog reminded me of the Pomeranian mix that my sisters and I had when we were little until we were teens and even in our early twenties! I think she was about 17 years old when she died. Our dog, Bullet, who we named after Roy Roger's dog from his tv show popular in the 60s, was a joy to us. She went everywhere with us, scampering along the dirt roads of Jumbo Gardens when we started grade school, playing with us in the back lanes of Windemere Ave. when we moved into the city of Port Arthur, grooving with us to our first records in the basement of the Kenogami Ave home our dad built--what she thought of Donovan's LP Mellow Yellow or the 45 Louie, Louie by Paul Revere and the Raiders, one cannot say but she seemed to enjoy them!--and she followed along with us when we moved to Jenny Ketola's old green shiny wood house on Empress Ave, and finally to the last home our dad built on Oliver Road where her stone lies in the back bush somewhere.

I have not gone to visit her grave in a very long time. The woods may be completely overgrown, I fear. I don't think I'll find her grave. Last time my sister and I went to try to find her stone, we were thwarted by heavy branches of balsam and spruce. We tried to find where Isa had buried her but the branches were scratching our arms, the ground was soppy, boggy, and full of roots and sinkholes, and the mosquitoes were eating us alive. Our Isa used to keep the bush somewhat under check when he was alive (although he was more of the live-and-let-live philosophy, of the belief in unlandscaped natural beauty) , but since he passed no one has gone into the woods back of the house to do any clearing or pruning.

on the road to Baalbek

Towards our last few weeks in Lebanon, I told my husband at least every other day, "I'm not leaving Lebanon without going to Baalbek." Visiting relatives in Lebanon makes setting firm plans difficult as there is no such thing as a plan, only a possible plan as who knows what or who would materialize? Every day plans to go to Baalbek were discussed. Everyone had some comment to contribute. But then another day would pass.
Finally the day came. My brother-in-law, 2 sisters-in-law, my nephew, my husband and I left Bishmezzine. We had decided to first spend the night in Ehden at my brother and sister-in-law's summer home, then set off in the morning over the Lebanese Mountains to Baalbek. Shortly after leaving Bishmezzine, the road starts to climb. Before the road bends sharply to Ehden and starts its steep winding climb up the mountains there is a spring. We stopped to fill our water containers and to drink cold mountain spring water under the watchful eye of the Virgin Mary. This area of northern Lebanon is known for its fresh, clear mountain springs.
Niches with the Virgin and Jesus and other saints had been carved into the cliff, for Christian communities have lived in this region of mountains and spectacular valleys for hundreds of centuries. Water is a gift; the place is Holy, in Aramaic, Qadesha.The Virgin at the top looks over
the Qadisha Valley.

This House, My Bones

My Mother-in-law's mantle

On Thursday, July13, 2006, the writing that normally fills the dates in my We'Moon Journal calendar just stopped. After that, the dates are completely blank. It's not that I had nothing to do-- it's that I was incapable of writing. Suddenly, writing flew from me like a frightened bird. I was in too much shock to record the banalities of my daily routine. Thursday July 13, 2006 was the day that I sat down in the morning to watch the news and saw the footage of Beirut's airport runways being bombed by Israel. That was the summer my family was in Lebanon, the unfortunate summer of 2006 when Israel bombed, invaded, destroyed, murdered, injured and terrorized a whole nation --- and terrorized loved ones living outside Lebanon.

I have witnessed state terrorism and it does not allow you to sleep at night.

Why don't we have compassion for each other? What if we imagined ourselves and our loved ones as "those people over there?" Or as "those people" in our own countries who are supposedly not "like us"?

Some poets have the magic gift of being able to write down the seeming impossible. One of those poets is Elmaz Abinader.

Aimee Suzara writes:

"To enter Abinader’s poetry is to enter a dream, now war-torn barren, now lush with imagination. A true storyteller, Elmaz Abinader unites the memoirist’s attention to detail with the songwriter’s penchant for precision of sound, bringing the reader into intimate relationship with her subjects, be they a family preparing for occupation, a sorrowful woman and “war-addicted” child, or herself as the daughter of Lebanese immigrants. Equipped with her own experiences of emigration and travel throughout North Africa, the Middle East and beyond, Abinader writes about occupied and invaded territories, about forced and voluntary migrations, with a voice that is at once humble and prophetic."

This House, My Bones by Elmaz Abinadir

Enter the house,
Sit at the table covered in gold
A cloth, Sitt embroidered
For the third child's birth.
Take the tea, strong and minty,
Hold the glass warm
Against your palms, fragrances
Of centuries fill you, sweetness
Rises up to meet you. The youngest boy
Fuad, shows you a drawing
He has made of a horse
You touch his shoulder, stroke
His hair, he loves to talk to strangers
Show them his room filled with posters
Of extinct and mythical animals: dinosaurs,
Unicorns; dragons. You want to linger
In the music of his voice, afraid his disappearance
Is inscribed on shell cases stockpiling in the Gulf.

Enter the mosque,
Admire the arches
Inlaid with sea-colored pebbles,
Follow the carpets, long runners
Of miracles in thread, your feet still damp
Slip against the marble floor.
Spines of men curl into seashells
In the room ahead. Echoes
Of the muezzin shoot around you
Fireworks of speeches and prayers.
Don't be afraid because they worship
Unlike you. Be afraid that worship
Becomes the fight, faith the enemy;
And yours the only one left standing.

Some one asks, what should we do
While we wait for the bombs, promised

And prepared? How can we ready ourselves?
Do we gather our jewelry and books,
And bury them in the ground? Do we dig
Escape tunnels in case our village is invaded?
Do we send our children across the border
To live in refugee camps remembering us
Only in dreams, ghostly voices calling their names?
What do we pack? The coffee urn father
Brought from Turkey? The pair of earrings
Specially chosen for the wedding day?
How can we ever pack anything if not everything?
If not the tick on the wall marking
The childrens' growth, if not the groan
Of the washing machine in the kitchen,
If not the bare spot on the rug
Where Jidd put his feet when he read
The Friday paper?
Help them gather things: brass doorknobs,
Enamel trays, blue glasses made in Egypt,
Journals of poetry, scraps of newspapers, recipes
They meant to try. And what about the things
They cannot hold. The beginning of life and all
The memories that follow. The end of life
And all that is left to do.

Enter the heart
Read the walls and all the inscriptions
The love of lovers, of children and spouses,
The love of stars, and cardamom and long eye lashes.
Tour the compartments telling
The story: that life was begun with faith,
That life may end with folly. See it heave
In fear that threats, predictions and actions
Are a history already written, spiraling,
Loose and out of control. No amount of hope
Can save it. No amount of words can stop it.
Hold the heart. Imagine it is yours.

Door of Roses

gate of my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's house in the village of Bishmezzine, Lebanon

yellow jasmine shrub outside my mother-in-law and father-in-law's back door of their house in the village of Bishmezzine.

my garden mint, which grows outside my back door, drying in my all-purpose baklava pan.

Today, I am sharing with you an excerpt from "Door of Roses" by Munia Samara, trans. Amal Amireh

MINT

doomsday of wind
talk of the garden
ambush of rubies
hiding in its sleeves
the leaf of the scene
and painting
the tea of the poor.

....

JASMINE

embellishments on the shirts of houses
and a perfume for the hands of the passersby
it amuses the picture of time
and when wind shakes it
it releases its seagulls
toward the villages.

Munia Samara is a Palestinian poet; this poetry excerpt is from The Poetry of Arab Women, ed. Nathalie Handal

Sunken Gardens on a Sunday afternoon

In the summer of '63, our family, who consisted then of our Isa, Aiti, older sister, Katja, younger sister, Della, and me, the middle sister (our brother wasn't born until '66), went to Hillcrest Park to the Sunken Gardens to take a family photo. As we are in our Sunday best, I believe the photo's purpose was to send it back home to the relatives in Finland and Sweden. We probably went for a Sunday drive first, because that's what families with cars did in the 60s--or at least immigrant families like ours who were striving to become part of the american culture. Getting a car was ....making it, man. Katja is taking the photo with our father's camera, and she's still taking photos! That's our mom, Ritva, on the left, with her summer purse beside her on the bench. In those days women had only 2 or 3 purses: a summer purse and a winter purse, and maybe an "evening bag" which was a small bag of some shiny material for dress-up evening parties or weddings. On the ground beside her is our dog, Bullet, whose name we pronounced Pulet-ti. Our dad had given Katja the honour of naming her when she was a new puppy, and as we were big fans of the tv show Roy Rogers, our new pomeranian mutt was named after Roy Roger's german shepherd. Never mind that our Puletti's looks did not match her namesake's. Lucky we didn't name her Trigger or Flipper, another tv show we loved to watch. I'm sitting beside my mother on the bench, wearing knee socks and my polished cotton dress...or was it a jumper?... of polkadots of various shades of brown. The fabric was soft and a bit shiny, making the dress very comfy to wear. Next to me is our baby sister, Della, who was called Baby Sister way past her babyhood. "Della on pei-pi" my mom would say, excusing her from all manners of chores. "Della's a baby" we heard over and over again, and hence treated her like that...way past her babyhood. Our father is on the other end of the bench. He's dead now; all the Maki boys have passed away, only Vellamo, the oldest sister, is still alive. She's 96 and a half now and the only Maki sibling left, as our uncle, Erkki, just died, may he rest in peace.

A few days ago, before the early morning frosts suddenly hit town to wipe out any delicate flowers, leaves, or tomatoes, I snapped this photo on my way back from my run. I had looped up the Bay St. stairs and cut across the Sunken Gardens, which are named so because they are a few steps down from street level. The zinnias in the garden were spectacular this year, a riot of rich colour. This is the same spot in the Sunken Gardens as that in the photo above. What's different today? Well, the bench is different; today's is just wood, no concrete on the ends. Is that the same house in the background? or is this bench slightly north of the earlier bench? A birch tree that has grown since '63 obscures the view. A different car, a more recent model, is driving by, heading down the hill on Dufferin Street. The zinnias splash colour, missing in the photo from '63. And, of course, no one is on the bench!

a trip to Kresges

S.S. Kresges was a five and dime store, which no longer exist, as shopping has changed. Kresges were the beginning of giving local businesses a hard time, just like the box chain stores today. But what did I care or know of capitalist competition when I was in grade school? All I knew was the thrill of going downtown to "just look" at Kresges, Woolworths or Zellers.

To get a sense of the what a five and dime store was like, here is an anecdote of a memory from iamkaym, who writes up a history of five and dimes like Kresges, Woolworths and the predecessor of chain stores, The Great Atlantic & Pacific Company, or A&P (which has recently changed its name to Metro...I guess it is leaving behind its colonial sounding name for something more urban):

"I personally always felt that dime stores were made with children in mind. The one I knew had a comic book rack just inside the door and nobody seemed to mind when kids spent an hour "just looking". At right angles to this was the candy section with solid squares of fudge in glass cases, ready to be weighed and sold by the pound, jawbreakers, jellybeans, licorice whips and other goodies.

There was a department in the back with goldfish, canaries, and white mice, together with assorted collars for the dog I hoped to have one day. Another area carried marbles, 20 to a mesh bag, with the larger "shooters" sold individually. There were pocket knives and cheap jewelry, racks of picture postcards, lurid masks just before Halloween, valentines in February, and a fairyland at Christmas."

when I'm 85

I left for my morning walk today at 9 am and returned at 3:30 pm. I had not realized it was -28 when I left, so although it was brilliantly sunny, by the time I walked the 4 k to Alli's, my legs were tingling in spite of having worn tights. Just past the stairs on High Street I passed the old woman with the red gloves who shakes her fist at all passing cars. As I walked down the sidewalk and she walked up the hill, our paths crossed and she looked me boldly in the face and said firmly, "Never mind. You go home. You don't live here. I can take care of the cars." And off she went to her house covered in untrimmed trees and lilac bushes, her purse swinging against her mink coat, her 40s style cloche pulled low over her forehead. Before going up her front steps she turned and one last time pumped her red-fisted hand angrily in the air at the next passing car.

After cutting Alli's hair, we sat together and had coffee and I ate two suolakala sandwiches, one Hannan Tädin kukeksi and one pala of kirkon naisten tekemä pulla. She told me a very detailed memory/story about when she was 5 and her brother died and she thought his eyes had opened and when she was 7 and looked out of the window at her sisters sliding down the snow-covered hill, and since Urho on Tuesday had told me a very detailed memory/story about when he was 5 and heard the vanha pieni ukko playing the Sami drum in his tent back of their camp up in northern Finland/Samiland, I wondered if I too, when I am 85, will remember my childhood with such clarity to attention?

Then, Alli showed me, once again, photos of her grandsons' weddings, and she told me about her last visit to her doctor and what he said and what she said. Alli wanted me to get her Saturday's newspaper from the box down the street, but it ate my loonie and 2 quarters, so I went back to her place and asked her for a veiti and went back to the newspaper box and poked and jimmied the coin slot trying to push the jammed coins further into the coinbox, all the while my fingers were getting quite cold, and I jiggled and jimmied some more but the coins refused to budge so then huriana paasassin sitä paksia (you have to know Finliskaa to get that last word), and then lo and behold, when I tugged at the handle, the glass door opened. I took 2 newspapers.

After bringing the knife and one newspaper back to Alli, I walked to Bay St. to exchange the hand crafted Wojo hat I had bought on Tuesday at VillEdge Art Gallery. I thought I had picked the right one that day. I had tried on this hat and that hat and back to this hat and then that hat and finally settled for a variegated green hat, but after wearing it for one hour and having an itchy forehead, I realized it was not the hat I was looking for. Now I have a brown hat. It is a crocheted hat worn low over the forehead that snugs the head. I looked in the mirror. A sudden thought flashed by...oh dear. Do I look like that old Italian lady in the old mink coat who shakes her fist at all the cars?... Never mind. I stuffed the new hat in my bag.

After talking to Cy about my sister's website launch and art exhibit and a possible 'fusion' of creative energies - coffee house - music - something at the old bar upstairs at the Finlandia Club, and him telling me about a possible next-year cross-border snow sculpture symposium for the empty corner lot and a possible living street night/art "billboard" art-in-the-street project for the summer, and after talking art with random people who had dropped into the shop, I thought, I'd better get going.

I crossed the street, intending to turn up and head back home, but in front of the Hoito I bumped into Chris R who was admiring the ice crystals suspended from the tree where the birch log bird house hangs. "I almost didn't recognize you with your hat on," I said.

We had a long conversation about the drag festival last night (not a car drag but a drag ball that was held in the Hall; the drag party was packed and a success), Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and opium, young Aboriginal offenders and addictions, the Palestine Event last night (also a success!), the importance of the need for non-Aboriginal Canadians to get outraged about the third world conditions of the reserves in NWO, and about how much blatant racism there is in this city, particularly in institutions, such as health and education. Afterwards, I decided not to walk home because now it was getting late and instead go straight to The Resting Frog Yoga Studio for the Welcome Back drop in for Marjut, who had recently come back from a 6 month meditation retreat in Mexico.


Cutting down the backlane of Machar Ave and then through the Wilson St. park and past the ice rink, I spontaneously decided to swing by the Northern Woman's Bookstore to say hello to whoever might be working the shift, which turned out to be Barb, who turned out to also be going to Marjut's welcome back drop-in. And that's where we went.

talking paper dolls

My Grandfather is a Postcard* but My Sister is a Paperdoll...

Last night, my friends and my sister and I were talking paper dolls. Carol-Ann said, remember how the paper dolls used to collapse forward at the waist because their waists were so small that they'd fold forward? ...phisshhhhhh.... and then the waist would get hopelessly creased and you'd try using tape to fix them but it would never work? They could never stand up again?

And then the tabs would break off all the clothes, said Michele.

I said, well, funny thing is, I wrote about paperdolls on my blog yesterday...

And Katja said, Well, Taina and I used to say, "Even when we're adults we're going to play with paperdolls!"

And she was right. Here we are, adults, playing with paperdolls. You can see the paper doll she made yesterday; it's the wonderful image above, which is the art that she created for RedShoes, our writing group. She made herself into a paperdoll standing on a clothesline of crows. That's my sister at about 4 years of age, her bxw photo self coloured in this time.

"Where is the girl who..."

This was the writing prompt we left with last time we met. Katja made a visual image. I'm jealous, I want to be a paper doll, too!

*My Grandfather is a Postcard is the title of a poem about our maternal paappa that my younger sister, Della, wrote. You know the postcard I mean; I told you about it before.

James St. swing bridge

Last week I had to bring our car for a wheel alignment at Midway Alignment in Westfort (best price in town!) and I had one hour to kill while waiting for the car to be ready. The shop is on Gore St, which runs parallel to the Kaministiqua River, so, I decided to walk to the James St. swing bridge that crosses onto Fort William First Nations Reserve. Here you can see the north bank of the Kam River, with Fort William Elevator in the distance

Crossing the bridge to Fort William First Nations Reserve. The swing bridge is 100 years old. It is narrow and one lane per direction. Made of metal and wood, vehicles crossing it make an awful rattle. Walking across it, you could easily touch the cars that pass, and the SUVs and trucks make you cling to the railing. We used to cross this bridge on Sunday drives to Chippewa Park with my family when I was a little girl and it never failed to bring us girls in the back seat to rapt attention. Despite the metal plates that have been laid down, you can still hear each slat clatter and clang under the car tires. It's a bit unnerving.

Looking through the slats of the bridge down river

Looking down into the river, a skeleton of a tree lies caught in a board walk

I wouldn't want to walk on that board walk. It looks awfully precarious.

Feeling a bit queasy from all the clattering, I glanced up at the sky

Relief! South bank of the Kam River, FWFN land

Dodging traffic, I jumped across the road and walked back the other side of the bridge

This is the part of the bridge that swings

looking up river, you can see the Place where the Thunder Birds Nest aka Mt. McKay

Back to Westfort

Barbie, Midge, Fulla and Razanne

I never did get a Barbie when I was a girl; my parents bought me Midge. My Midge had freckles and flipped out reddish ginger hair. I immediately disliked her. She wasn't the "real thing", i.e. Barbie. She looked "different", i.e. not the blonde-haired Barbie that was the heart's desire of many girls. Well, at least I didn't get Skipper, which was the doll my little sister, Della, got. My sister, Katja, being the older sister, did get Barbie. Her Barbie looked very 60s with her short blonde bubble cut hair-do and cat eyes. Mostly, I sewed my own doll outfits. Even back then we couldn't afford to buy them, and now! seeing the prices charged for vintage Midge and Barbie outfits, oh boy! Those little plastic shoes that always got lost? They're $150 a pkg today. A 1960s Barbie: $1524.

Find your Barbie Katja and sell it on e-bay!

Seems that 50s and 60s Barbie stuff is the stuff of dream collections, too, these days, for different nostalgic reasons.

Some people suffer no such nostalgia, but re-signify Barbie, giving others a fright.

Still others want to transform Barbie into more pleasing molds. Get rid of her cleavage. Her "Western" look.

Even Mattel in seeking new markets, produces a series of collectors dolls that include a Moroccan Barbie and Leila, "a Muslim slave girl in an Ottoman court". Orientalism for children.

Saudi Arabia banned Barbie. Then a Syrian company jumped into the market and created Fulla, who they marketed as a kinder, modest version of Barbie. Who doesn't lie. Yet,

"Despite the effort to create an Islamic fashion doll, Fulla and Barbie are more closely related than the Saudis and others might like to admit. Fulla may frequent the souks of the Mideast and Barbie may hang out in the malls of America, but they were "born" in the same place - China."

Some girls, however, still prefer Barbie:

"Jyza Sybai , a lanky, tomboyish Saudi 10-year-old, visiting Syria with her family for a short vacation, disagreed. 'All my friends have Fulla now, but I still like Barbie the best," Jyza said. "She has blond hair and cool clothes. Every single girl in Saudi looks like Fulla, with the dark hair and the black scarf. What's so special about that?'"

"Beyond symbolising the ideal Muslim woman, Fulla also reflects a growing trend towards the commercialisation of Islam by entrepreneurs who have realised the gains to be made in selling Islamic values."

Cashing in on dollydom, Razanne was created. You can buy her online and shop by theme. Razanne has proven to be very popular as every single one online is Out of Stock

even the ones that don't seem quite right.