It has been a busy two weeks and I have been up and down in my emotional and physical energy levels, at times grumpy and totally spent at the end of the day feeling like I have accomplished little and other days very much enjoying the fall weather and my various activities.

Thanksgiving saw a gathering of a crew of about 10 for a Saturday potluck  where I did a honey mustard covered ham. Potlucks are great because always such a variety of dishes..we had spinach salad with mandarin oranges to spicy baked beans. Amelia visited from Vancouver and one of her challenges was practicing on a standard as she borrowed a friends car to drive to Calgary…the only hitch was one has to remember to take off the hand brake or one will stall several times as she did in the Esso station on Sunday.

October yard work has included digging, fertilizing, thinning plants and putting in tulips and lillies. In my pruning discovered that a hand saw is much easier to use than a skill saw.  These are the fall colors of the cherry and rose bush before the pruning.

At one point I had considered the possibility of seeing if I could go north for a few weeks in November, and it is especially hard when one know there is a need as in my last posting in Arctic Bay….get news from other co-workers and saddened to hear of a suicide in a family I have worked with.

However, I think it will probably be December or January until I am free to go because of commitments here in Edmonton.
So some of my activities have included..

Interspersed between being on call for the hospital and yard work, attended some lectures from Litfest last weekend. LitFest is Canada’s only Creative Non-fiction  The theme this year was Hot North---a number of writers on the Arctic which I enjoyed.. One book I am reading and cannot put down is Melanie McGrath's the Long Exile. A british writer she has done her research well and it documents the movement of Inuit families from the west side of Hudson bay in the early 50s the to the stark and almost uninhabitable high Arctic of Ellesmere Island. It begins with Robert Flarety's filming of Nanook in 1923, a very idealized view of Eskimo life and traces the families from there including the son he left. Went to two sessions with Donna Hamar, another social worker who also does casual social work in the north. Panel discussion and booksigning with anthropologist, Nancy Wachowich, and  Rhoda Katsak from Pond Inlet, on a three-generation life history project which eventually became a book entitled Saqiyuq: Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women.