Black Dot Diary

It’s autumn and that means it’s time for my annual rant about the gas-​powered leaf blower.

I really, truly do not under­stand why these things exist. They churn out smoke and fumes. They spoil the silence of a Sun­day morn­ing. From my point of view, they are not even all that effec­tive: I could rake the leaves in less time than it takes the guy down the street to make sure every speck of tree detri­tus is blown into a neat lit­tle pile (which the wind then blows around again anyway).

This morn­ing Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Lal­ib­erté boarded the Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion and con­ducted a news con­fer­ence wear­ing his trade­mark red clown nose.

Lal­ib­erté made the two-​day jour­ney in a Russ­ian Soyuz craft along with Russ­ian cos­mo­naut Maxim Surayev and U.S. astro­naut Jef­frey Williams. The space sta­tion is 350 kilo­me­tres above the Earth.

I always wanted to go to space. I remem­ber watch­ing the TV as Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin made that first moon land­ing in 1969. I told every­one that I wanted to be an astro­naut with NASA. I never did reach my goal but some­times when I’m look­ing up at the stars, I imag­ine what it must be like to be out there gaz­ing back at the Earth as Aldrin and Arm­strong did 40 years ago.

True con­fes­sion: I once hated CBC Radio with a pas­sion. It seems almost un-​Canadian to say that, I know. My dis­like of our national broad­caster began when I was a kid on long car trips across British Colum­bia. Why, I won­dered, would any­one want to lis­ten to talk­ing on the radio instead of the lat­est music. Booooring.

When I became a cre­ative writ­ing stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Vic­to­ria, I thought I should give the lofty CBC another try because so many of the writ­ers I admired swore by it. I tried for years. My dis­like was sealed again when a CBC com­men­ta­tor (maybe Peter Gzowski) vis­ited a chicken bar on the prairies and recorded the sounds of chick­ens being slaugh­tered so we city folks could appre­ci­ate where our meat comes from. I aban­doned CBC for years after that.

Photo by Ash­ley Rose, Cre­ative Commons

Today the rain started. It could have been worse. They pre­dicted hail for Vic­to­ria. I woke up this morn­ing in an amaz­ing mood to a sunny fall day: head clear, full of energy, ready for any­thing. By 3 p.m., my mood greyed with the sky and by 4 p.m. I was down­right despon­dent when the rain came.

Since mov­ing to the West Coast of British Colum­bia 22 years ago, I’ve con­sid­ered myself a weather vic­tim. A few years ago I had to admit it — I suf­fered from SAD (Sea­sonal Effec­tive Dis­or­der). If I could move to the desert I would, but love has a way of mak­ing us do crazy things. For love, I live in a rain forest.

Jazzie the Bas­set Hound waits mourn­fully for a morsel.

Two years ago I was cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing the Island of Mag­giore in Italy, fol­low­ing the same path walked by St. Fran­cis to his sea­side grotto on the shores of Lake Trasi­meno, the liq­uid jewel of Umbria.

Accord­ing to leg­ends, in 1211 a local fish­er­man gave St. Fran­cis a fish but Fran­cis, ever the lover of ani­mals, threw it back. The fish grate­fully fol­lowed St. Fran­cis around the lake until the saint bestowed on it a spe­cial bless­ing. St. Fran­cis became known as the patron saint of ani­mals (and later of ecology).