Things I love. (11)

I love Christmas with my family. Every year there is a puzzle that must be tackled and a new board game to learn how to play. I love when the puzzle isn't finished at the end of the holiday so my mother and I must sit down together, in silence for hours, studying and placing pieces diligently. It is an act of passion and perfection. And those hours in silence are those moments when I love my mother most - all thanks to Christmas.

Things I love. (10)

I love the vast prairie. It is not mountains, and in contrasting them it tells me so much more about my existence than I have yet discovered. It is subtle in its changes. It requires tender alertness and awareness of everything that is seen, felt and inhaled. I love that about the prairies - the fresh air and the freedom to inhale. And the storms, which, simply because they are so grand, can only possibly be limited to the prairies of the world.

Things I love. (9)

I love the theory of music. I study it on my own. I take the pieces I am playing or singing, limiting myself to masterworks of many eras, and study intently how music is possible in some places but not others. I read texts on music theory. Not often, but often enough to keep me aware of what is taking place when I listen to a new piece. And it makes me admire composers so much more. I love music theory.

Things I love. (8)

I love that moment of secret when, late at night, I start reading my magazines about fine-crafted carpentry. Not as a distraction but as a way of figuring out how things have been made, and then as a way of imagining how I can make things in the future. I'm almost getting ready to draw out a blanket chest for my father and I to make together. He'll have no idea that it is something that I want to do when I present it to him. He doesn't know that I love making things, and seeing them used, and knowing that I was a part of the production. I am an industrialist at heart.

A break in the theme....

"Dear Neal:

It is my sincere pleasure to inform you that the Graduate Program Committee is recommending to the Simon Fraser University Senate Graduate Studies Committee your admission to the Master's program for the Fall 2011 term... ... Professor Mark Leier [head of the History Department] has expressed an interest in acting as your supervisor."

- Mary-Ellen Kelm
Graduate Program Chair, Department of History, Simon Fraser University

I really, really did not want to break the theme. I like this series. And it is going somewhere important (in due time, like all of my series...). But when you've got something to celebrate, like getting into the graduate school and program that you so desperately wanted to get into, any series should be disturbed...

Things I love. (7)

I love discovery - finding things that have been found before but by different minds and hands and eyes and feet. That moment of first encounter, when your mind is racing to understand the implications of newness. I find it happens most when researching for history papers. Discovering that somebody had an addiction to alcohol, or that France in the 1790s was actually a collection of small states rather than an organized, functioning nation of one people. But it happens all the time.

Things I love. (6)

I love the village of Hoddevik, in Norway. It is the birthplace of my great-grandfather, and it is a place that I have had the honour of visiting. Beautiful is a word too small to explain that tiny town of 30 inhabitants. I can remember that moment when you just turn the corner, go over the ridge, and then descend the mountainside in your car, on the road built by Nazi slaves, and you see the unending ocean in the background. In the foreground you are bombarded by green, grasses and mosses and lichens that grow year round in the warm, salt-infused, moist air. You see yellow houses surrounded by trees imported from British Columbia because of their resilience to wind. And I also saw a Canadian flag on a flag-pole, waving to me and welcoming me to a land that felt like home even though it was nothing like home.