11 years after Mom

Lighting a yahrzeit candle for my mother tonight. What an odd thing to be lighting it in a little cabin in the Slocan Valley. My mom, Shirley, died in April 1995. I'm sure it'll always feel a lot more recent than that. Anyways, she has probably never had a memorial candle lit from her in view of a glacier.

This afternoon's workshop at the school was a little bumpy, but some good things came of it. So odd to enter a classroom and have worked with all the kids before, but a year earlier. So I wasn't a novelty to them, but we weren't exactly pals from last week. The highlight was the group collaborative poem, one word at a time, written on the chalkboard. Tomorrow I'll be doing four hours of poetry with 25 kids from two schools. It will be outside the school setting, which is good. Again, I worked with some of these students before, but I'm feeling very positive about this session. On Thursday I'll be doing fiction with the same group.

Tonight I was to do a poetry/fiction workshop with a small group of adults. They elected to keep doing poetry through the whole three hours. It was a blast, a lot of fun. Most of them had never written poetry before. Two of them were songwriters. I wrote a poem I'm pretty pleased with.

Getting back to Terry's property, I passed a deer just 20 metres from the house. It was a lovely sight in the dark, just off the driveway. Neat to know there are deer wandering around so close.

Went for a drive this afternoon. It's amazing how the scenery changes every time you come around a bend in these winding roads. Lakes, mountains, glaciers, trees. And again, the occasional deer at the side of the highway, grazing in the afternoon sun.

Over and out.