In the order in which they're occurring to me, here are the 10 best things that I've done, found, read, seen, participated in, or encountered in 2008:
My second year attending the Vancouver bloggers' and new media 'unconference.' This year I arranged to attend with my friend and neighbour Colleen, which meant I actually went to the dinner that kicked off the unconference, got there on time for both the Friday and Saturday sessions, had someone to compare notes with, and enjoyed the commute. Not to mention the environmental correctness of car pooling. Oh and the fact that I got to drink because for once, I wasn't driving!
Benefits of attending: far too numerous to list, despite the fact that I was still in quite a state and not feeling terribly sociable due to a bizarre and delayed form of grief after my mother's death on June 26, 2007. With my usual beginner's luck, the first new person I met was Kris Krug, one of the driving forces behind the unconference. The second was Mhairi Petrovic, who's become a good friend and my strategic partner. Oh and Colleen won one of the big doorprizes, about $400 worth of Mac cosmetics, which made her day (and that of her two teenage daughters)..
2. Living Through Loss Counselling, a non-profit organization that provides both drop-in, group, and 1:1 counselling for people who are having difficulty dealing with grief of all sorts. Again thanks to my friend Colleen for suggesting that I get some bereavement counselling. To Judy, the group facilitator, and to all the members of my group, thank you for your support, your kindness, and the absolutely non-judgmental caring you displayed. Bizarre though I found it, traipsing off to what I came to think of as 'the room where the sad people meet' every Wednesday night for six weeks, I loved the fact that we were able to laugh amongst our tears and during the breaks at the strange thoughts, dreams, feelings, and ideas we had. I hope you are all able to approach the winter solstice and the festive season with lighter hearts and that your memories of your lost loved ones have turned that ineffable corner so you can think of those who are gone with smiles rather than tears (she says, as she finds tears pouring down her face while typing). What can I say - at least the memory of physical pain doesn't hurt the same way reliving emotional pain does.
3. Fridays at Tinseltown with the principal of Happy Flower Research (you know who you are) (web site NOT under construction). While this theatre has occasionally disappointed by showing nothing but the kind of Hollywood blockbuster I'm happy to watch only on late night TV when I can't sleep, there is almost always one film I want to see, something sufficiently offbeat like the wonderful Turkish film we saw whose name I won't remember till I find the ticket stub, the truly horrific Atonement that I waited months and months to see and then hated; The Women from which I learned the lesson: read the reviews before you go and if they're all bad, see something else; and the surprisingly good The Duchess, also starring scenery-chewer Keira Knightley.
Of the first-run films I saw in 2008 (off to see Frost/Nixon tomorrow), Brick Lane was far and away the best, despite the bizarrely uncharitable reviews it got from the local mainstream Vancouver media (WestEnder, you should be ashamed of yourself - if you don't know enough about traditional Islamic beliefs and cultures to realize that when a woman allows a man other than her husband or son to see her without her headscarf on, you need a compulsory world religions course. And shame on you for having no search function on your site and for not archiving your old reviews). I am always highly critical of films made from books I've read, but I found no fault with this adaptation. While the portrait of Nazneen's husband is much thinner than in the novel, it was an amazingly subtle, complex, and moving film. But then I love those very slow-moving French and Italian movies where nothing much happens.
As a recovering workaholic, going to Tinseltown on Fridays does indeed mark the end of the week, and I am grateful for not only the films but also for the free parking. To the man at the ticket booth who never hesitates to let me out of the lot without paying despite the fact that I am not always able to find the parking ticket I've so carefully had validated at the movie theatre - thank you for trusting me. Thank you also for suppressing your laughter at my inability to make the turn and still hand you my ticket without getting out of car, week after week, until after I've driven off. :)
4. Todd Sieling's Slow Blog Manifesto, which, in @2020science's words, is 'A wonderful antithesis of the Twitter experiment!' I look forward to meeting this lovely young man at Northern Voice 2009, when I promise I will be more sociable.
5. The Twitterverse, the blogosphere, and flickr, which has introduced me to incredible gems of people like Michelle Sullivan (I deliberately linked to the two-part movie she made about Twitter rather than her main blog site because if you don't yet Twitter, you MUST view this to get a sense of how simultaneously silly and delightful Twittering can be - oh Michelle, are you going to volunteer to do the French translation of the Slow Blogging Manifesto? My tweet earlier today was obviously far too subtle); Denise Caruso of The Hybrid Vigor Institute, a woman after my own heart, to whom I have barely spoken but with whom I have this bizarre psychic connection (how did I know she knew how to tap dance? I can't explain it), and of course, Andrew Maynard, another in a long line of cross-platform talented people and beneficiaries of a British educational system that seems to routinely produce people who acquire PhDs in scientific disciplines and yet write beautifully lucid, explanatory, and compelling prose.
And then there's the cheeky Dr. Ben Goldacre of Bad Science fame. I should put out the call now for volunteers to do security when the publicity tour for the North American version of his book hits sometime in 2009 - let's just say that Duthie's on West Fourth in Vancouver (you know, the one practically next door to the Capers with its extensive collection of homeopathic remedies) would not be the best venue for a reading.
The British Boy Toy from the long-ago days of Yahoo! Books and Literature chat, who still calls and emails me, although now it's from places in Africa I'm not sure exist.
Last but never least, the continuing virtual friendship with the amazingly prolific and talented Paul Jackson/Art Nahpro. I am doing my best to persuade him to enter the short film contest at Sundance this year, and have every confidence that if he enters, he will win. If you don't fall in love with his collages, his paintings, or his photos, you will at least appreciate the gems he finds, like this Eddie Izzard - Death Star Canteen video.
6. My quilting instructor, Beau Gabiniewicz, and her wonderfully calm and reassuring approach to teaching and to quilting. Since I never got around to spending time in New Brunswick so Aunt May could teach me how to quilt, taking this class was really important to me. It was really lovely to spend six Monday evenings in a row with a group of women whose ages spanned five decades. It was also heartwarming to see two different mother-daughter teams in the class, and to meet Barb, an avid quilter who brought in a book with an amazing line drawing of women quilting at the beginning of the 20th Century. It reminded her, she said, of learning to quilt at her grandmother's house. A couple of weeks ago I saw a vanity license plate in my neighbourhood, I QUILT. Wish I'd had the camera with me.
Much to my surprise, quilting is challenging on many different levels. Not least of which is trying to figure out how much fabric to buy. To my eternal chagrin, I am still as arrogant as ever about reading instructions - I don't actually read them, I glance at them and then forge ahead. Sometimes this works. Other times it doesn't, as when I failed to notice the instructions for one of my quilts said to sew two A pieces together, then two Bs, then sew the A blocks to the B blocks. No wonder I wasn't getting rectangles by creating blocks of AB, AB combos. It's ok, I've got a good seam ripper.
One of the nicest things about starting to quilt was the quest for fabrics - I've made the rounds of most of the remaining fabric stores in the Metro Vancouver area. Much to my surprise, they've all got strengths and weaknesses, even when the stores are members of the same chain. Some have great prices, some have great selections in particular colour ranges (not so great in others), and some have great staff. To Betty at Fabricana, whose advice was invaluable when I was first purchasing the tools I'd need, and to Cara at Birkeland Bros., where I purchased the wool batting for my first quilt, thank you. Your enthusiasm was inspiring, and your patience with my stupid questions was exemplary.
7. Finally spending a week at Diane Thompson and Dan Workman's cashmere goat farm in beautiful Nazko, BC. What on earth could I have been looking for on the internet four years ago when I discovered cashmere came from goats and that, unlike sheep, the goats don't have to be sheared, just combed? After meeting an amazing woman who raised milk goats in the Eastern Townships of Quebec - and also designed the curtain for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa - at a writing workshop 20 years ago, raising goats has always been a strange little fantasy of mine. It took me a while to get there, but I'll always be glad I went.
Two scientists turned farmers, Diane and Dan were incredibly stimulating conversationalists, even at breakfast (I had to get up a couple of hours early and pre-caffeinate in order to be able to hold my own). I learned so much from both of them: how to milk a goat, how fundraising really works in a community setting, and, most important, how to follow your dream. I like to think that if I lived in the area, I too could be one of the Bad Women of Nazko. Sort of the same way I got to be an honourary Newfie without having to drink Screech. :)
8. Of the books I read this year, Helen Humphreys' Wild Dogs, Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen and the Kazuo Ishiguro I was persuaded to read (against my better judgment after the horrific disappointment of The Unconsoled), Never Let Me Go, were the fiction standouts.
9. Non-fiction is either a lot better written than it used to be or something in my brain has actually changed, as 2008 found me reading almost as much non-fiction as fiction (ordinarily the ratio is 1:100; suddenly this year it was more like 1:3). Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World, John Vaillancourt's The Golden Spruce, and, of course, Gabor Mate's moving study of addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, were the ones I'd recommend. Poverty, the natural world, geology, foresty, the human condition....
10. The birth of my third cousin (or first cousin twice removed), Ava Abigail Grace, at 4:27PM on Tuesday, November 25, 2008. Have yet to see a picture, but having known your mother, your grandmother, and your great-grandmother, there is no doubt in my mind, my dear, that you will be a beauty, inside and out.
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