Modeling Career-Different Perceptions

Can you, short of an earthquake hold a pose?  Are you willing to be centre stage for long periods of time? Are you comfortable having your body parts talked about? Can you be the object of intense scrutiny by a roomful of people for at least an hour?

I’ll never forget my first sitting as an art model. Before I took the job I did a little online research. One website suggested you consider the above questions seriously before becoming a model.

Many years ago the art teacher at the international school in Hong Kong where I worked, sent out an e-mail asking for volunteers to serve as a model for a drawing class. I was a little hesitant. Wasn’t I too old?

Then I read the story of Lala Lezli, a former dancer with the celebrated Martha Graham company, who modelled for California artists for fifty years. She was still working as a model when she died at age 92. I wasn’t too old to be a model.

I also found out art students need to learn to draw real people, not just the idealized human form. Models should be of all ages, races, shapes and sizes. Indeed when I hesitantly replied to the art teacher’s e-mail I was surprised by his warm response. He’d be happy to have me, model.

I asked if I should wear a special outfit, but the art teacher suggested I dress in a normal way. I’d read models should come prepared with interesting poses, but the art teacher had a pose in mind. He wanted me to sit on a chair on the elevated platform at the front of the room. He even arranged my feet and hands and told me which direction to turn my face.

 I walked into the class as the teacher was giving final instructions and was quickly seated so the students would have a maximum amount of time to work. It was surprisingly easy to sit still for an hour. I had a good view of the drawing tables and was fascinated by the progress being made on the dozen different images of me emerging on paper across the room.

It was interesting how each of the students perceived me in a slightly different way. No two sketches were the same. Just like in life, I thought. No two people perceive us in the same way and we have to accept and indeed appreciate that.

Other posts …….

Using the Other Side of My Brain

Paint By Number

My Husband is Famous

 

Mrs Brown’s DayCare-This Woman Should Be A Jamaican Saint

Children, children everywhere!  One hundred and forty of them! Our host here in Jamaica, Tony Beach took us to visit Mrs Brown’s Daycare in the Edgecombe Ghetto of Runaway Bay last week. Tony has great respect for the work done at this daycare and he wanted us to see it for ourselves. Here’s Tony with Mrs Claudette Brown who runs a daycare for 140 children on a tiny piece of land in a ramshackle old building with four small rooms. Six other women work with her. When we drove up the children outside playing in the small cement and dirt front yard rushed up to the gate to greet us. The children said “Hello, Hola and Bonjour” welcoming us in three languages. “Do you want to know how to say hello in German?” Dave asked.  When he said, “Guten Tag,” the kids quickly copied him. A little boy immediately grabbed Dave’s hand and a little girl mine when we entered the yard offering to be our guides. It was amazing how many children were crammed into each of the tiny rooms. In the two-year-old’s room, they were giving the children lunch. Tony told us when the daycare runs short of money for salaries the women who work there simply divide whatever funds they have left after expenses for their salaries. Apparently Mrs Brown often ends up staying at the daycare till well after it closes at 5 pm, sometimes till 8 o’clock, because parents don’t show up to pick up their children. Sometimes she just ends up taking children who are left behind home with her. 

The kids ran to get books and asked me to read to them. I was amazed at how they knew their colors, the names of shapes, concepts like big and small and over and under. Tony told us the local primary schools say children from Mrs Brown’s daycare are usually well ahead of the other students when they enter school. A teacher in a tiny dark classroom with tarp walls was working on counting concepts with a small group of older children. Tony and Mrs Brown were having a heart to heart talk while we toured the daycare. Tony runs an after school program in Runaway Bay and he tries to share supplies donated to his program with Mrs Brown and help her out financially when he can. Often parents of Mrs Brown’s students can’t afford to pay the minimal fee she charges and she hates to make the children leave because she tells Tony, “it’s not their fault their parents don’t pay and I can’t punish them because of their parents.” As kids do everywhere these Jamaican sweethearts loved Dave and they all wanted to play with him. Claudette Brown gets no government support for her daycare. It is her own service to the community.  She’s quite an amazing woman. 

We were so glad Tony had taken us to Mrs Brown’s daycare. She is doing so much to help so many children with so very little. 

Other posts about Jamaica……..

Beaching It on the Caribbean

The Remarkable Place We Work in Runaway Bay

Pedicure Patois

Building A House in Jamaica

Wish I Had Them In Jamaica

Pirates, Plantations, Political Activists and Pot

Jamaican Introductions

Acquiring a Taste for Jamaican Food

Dead Yard Party

Five Crowns Champ

On Wednesday our friends Brian and Merle invited us and two other couples over for a games night. After sampling some delicious desserts they introduced us to a new game called Five Crowns. It is basically rummy except there are five suits instead of four and the wild card keeps changing every round as does the number of cards you receive in your hand.  Five Crowns was lots of fun and I had an unbelievable run of luck. I kept getting these phenomenal hands and then turning over just the right card at the very end of each round so I could lay out all my cards and finish without any penalty points.  The winner in Five Crowns is the person with the lowest score. Someone at the table who had played the game a lot muttered about how a person who ‘didn’t really even know what she was doing’ could be emerging the clear leader.  At the end of the match, I was the victor having tallied the fewest points. I almost never win at cards.  So it was sweet! And as my friend Merle pointed out a look at the score sheet clearly showed that the four women at the table had all done better than any of the men.  Nice! Women have a long way to go to achieve equality with men in our society but on Wednesday night around the card table the women were clearly way ahead of the males. 

Other posts……..

New Games

Learning to Play Poker

Burgers and Blokus

 

Date Night

When my husband Dave plans a date night for us I can always look forward to it being something unique.  Last Friday he picked me up after I had spent a long day doing stuff for my Dad and said we were headed for a literary spot.  

I would never have guessed it was a brewery, but the Stone Angel fit the bill since it was named after the famous book The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. The large statue in the brewery attests to the fact but just to be sure I double-checked with the bartender and he confirmed indeed the brewery had been named after Margaret’s book. 

Dave is part of a beer club that meets regularly to explore all the breweries in the city so he had been to the Stone Angel with his club members.  I don’t drink beer normally and since I was the only woman in the place during our entire visit I was a little intimidated but I had a good time.  

Dave picked out two beers he thought I might like- a Kilter Juicy and a Peanut Butter Stout.  I tasted them both. The stout was a little too bitter for me but the Kilter Juicy had a nice grapefruity flavour and I drank the whole thing. 

Next, we were off to the Tehran Cafe.  I had never had Iranian food before but it was wonderful. I ordered a walnut, chicken and pomegranate stew with saffron rice and green salad. So good. Dave had a lamb shank with rice and Shirazi salad.  It was great too. 

We enjoyed the interesting art in the restaurant and the attentive service.  

A literary brewery and a new kind of food were not what I was expecting for my date night but it was a fun evening. Even after spending more than 45 years together with him,  my husband continues to make my life interesting. 

Other posts……….

I Drank a Beer in Austria

Laughing Without An Accent

Visiting A Colorado Microbrewery and The Barry Manilow Concert That Wasn’t

Look At The Bathroom Floors

Recently my husband Dave has been inviting guests to come and see our bathrooms soon after they arrive. “Just look at those floors,” he will say.  Most guests are puzzled particularly if they have been to our home before.  “Did you change the flooring?” they will ask. “It kind of looks the same.”  At this point, I usually intervene.  “Dave washed the bathroom floor and he wants you to notice what a great job he did.” 

In December we did some minor renovations to our two bathrooms.  New toilets, new hardware and newly painted cabinet doors.  I also wanted to replace the flooring which readily shows any speck of dirt and needs to be swept or washed far more often than I like to do it.  However, after consulting with a friend who is a flooring expert, Dave decided taking out our old tiles and putting in new ones would be far too difficult and costly. So he made me a counter offer. “How about from now on I wash the bathroom floors?”

I accepted without hesitation.  After some forty years of cleaning bathroom floors I was ready to turn the task over to someone else.  And not only does Dave clean the floors of our bathrooms he has taken to doing all the other cleaning in the bathrooms as well.  I am thrilled!  Knowing he will take care of that loathsome task makes the rest of my housecleaning less onerous and dreaded for me. 

If having my own personal bathroom cleaner means our guests will be treated to a bathroom viewing at the start of their visits I can certainly live with that.

Other posts……….

I Don’t Make My Bed

Housework

Doing Housework in Costa Rica

Kindred Spirits

Last week I spent a morning in Carmen Manitoba talking to a group of some twenty -five women about my life and travels.  Susan Mooney had invited me to speak. She and her husband Tom are long-time residents of Carmen, but Tom’s parents Isaac and Lottie Mooney lived in the Steinbach area from 1944-1980.  One Christmas Lottie gave her son Tom and his wife Susan a gift subscription to The Carillon and they have been subscribers ever since. Susan has been reading my newspaper column Viewpoint since I first began writing it in 1985.  She had always wanted to meet me and decided inviting me to Carmen, as a speaker for her women’s group, would be a way to do that.

I was interested to learn that the group, which meets at the Carmen United Church, has been in existence for almost forty years. Every Wednesday they invite a speaker to make a presentation and then they ask questions and have a discussion. In the weeks prior to my October visit, Theresa Oswald, a former Manitoba Health Minister had been a speaker as had Jean Friesen a university professor and spokesperson for the Treaty Relations Committee of Manitoba. The week following my visit Nilufer Rahman a Muslim community builder and filmmaker was scheduled as the guest and after her retired Canadian senator, Joanne Buth was speaking.  I was told authors Miriam Toews and recent Governor General award winner Joan Thomas had presented in past years.

The women began their meeting by introducing themselves and then answering a question posed by Susan Mooney. She said since she had always wanted to meet me she wondered who might be a person the other women had always wanted to meet. A number thought they would like to meet Queen Elizabeth while several named favorite childhood authors like Lucy Maude Montgomery, Beatrix Potter, and A.A. Milne. Others mentioned the Dali Lama, Michelle Obama, Margaret Atwood, and Eric Clapton. One woman was looking forward to meeting a refugee family that would be arriving in Carmen shortly. Hearing the women’s answers was a great way for me to get to know the group a little better. I told them I already felt like we were kindred spirits. 

In my talk, I used examples from my own life to expand on an idea I was first introduced to at my son’s university graduation many years ago.  On the journey of life we have a choice to be pilgrims or tourists.  Which will we be?   After my presentation, the women asked questions and made comments and their ideas and contributions were thought-provoking and meaningful.  During our lively discussion, I learned more about the women’s families, travels, reading preferences, community work and faith affiliations.

The women take turns bringing soup for lunch each Wednesday, so I was treated to a hearty bowl of hot vegetable soup and some fresh bread before beginning my drive back to Winnipeg.  The women in the group are busy with all kinds of other interesting things.  The woman to my left at lunch had come to our meeting from her yoga class and the one on my right told me she was headed off to a community choir practice.

Before I said goodbye the women posed for a photo with me.  I wanted a reminder of my morning with them. I gave Susan Mooney a hug and thanked her for inviting me. Two other women who also happened to be near the church door as I left gave me hugs too.  I left Carmen enriched, blessed and delighted to have spent a morning with such a group of caring, engaged and intelligent women. 

Other posts…………..

Strong Women

I’ve Been A Newspaper Columnist for Decades

Women Were Honored?  Think Again John Kelly. 

A Puzzling Achievement

I finished before they did!  When we were in Mexico last winter Dave and our friend Rudy who was staying with us, did crossword puzzles together almost every day from a big book of New York Times crossword puzzles Rudy had brought along with him. Although I wanted to participate the puzzles were clearly too hard for me. Dave has been doing the New York Times crossword puzzle every weekend for over forty years so he’s an expert.  

Here in Winnipeg Dave has a regular Saturday morning date with his friend Les at a neighborhood coffee shop to do the New York Times crossword puzzle in the Winnipeg Free Press. After we returned home from Mexico in March I decided I would start joining them in an attempt to develop my crossword puzzle skills. Although the New York Times crossword was too daunting for me I would work my way up to it by doing the less difficult Premier Crossword in Saturday’s paper.  

Initially, I could get only a small portion of my puzzle done before Dave and Les had finished the New York Times crossword.  Then Dave would take my crossword and quickly finish it. 

Slowly but surely I improved and would get more and more of my puzzle done before the guys finished theirs. Then this past Saturday a miracle! I finished my puzzle before the guys finished theirs.  Granted they said their puzzle was VERY hard and I figured out the theme to mine quite early on so that made it much easier to complete.  But still…………. I was pretty pumped!

I may not be ready for the New York Times crossword puzzle yet but I’m getting there.  

Other posts……….

Sunday Morning At the Olive Mill

Coloring Books- Not Just For Kids

 

Learning a New Word

I was doing a workshop at the art gallery last week and a ten-year-old wrote the word ‘yeet’ in big letters on a paper where he was sketching ideas for an art project. “What does ‘yeet’ mean?” I asked.   He and his friends laughed and looked a little incredulous.  “You don’t know what yeet means?”

The twenty-something university students in charge of the group took pity on me and explained that ‘yeet’ was an exclamation of sorts that was said to express excitement or surprise and was often a word used just at the moment you were in the act of throwing something like a ball.

I felt a little less ignorant when I discovered  ‘yeet’ is listed in the online Collins English dictionary as a word currently pending approval. The Grammarly app I use to correct errors in my writing online did not recognize the word.

The Urban Dictionary was more helpful providing me with this definition of ‘yeet.’

“Yeet is a versatile word that can be used as an exclamation, a verb, or even a noun.
As an exclamation, it can be used to express excitement, usually happily but also nervously. It can also be used as an exclamation of victory or as a battle cry or focus-shout while throwing or hitting something. Yeet can also be a feeling or emotion, usually like an adrenaline rush. The word has a distinct feel, and power to it. To yeet is to give your full power and soul to an action you’re doing.” 

 

I am not sure I will make the word ‘yeet’ a mainstay of my vocabulary but I may throw it into a conversation in the future just to show how cool and young at heart I am.

And just in case you forget what ‘yeet’ means you can actually buy a T-shirt with the word ‘yeet’ on the front that includes a definition. 

Other posts………

Extra Crispy

Chreaster Really Is A Word

A New Favorite

Back Porch News- Before the Age of Facebook

 

I Did It!

I have been trying for years to fold fitted sheets in a way that left them smooth and flat and not some kind of jumbled mess that I had to stuff into my linen closet.  I talked to lots of people about it and they suggested I watch videos.  Let me tell you I watched a bunch! Still I could never get those darn fitted sheets folded properly and just gave up.  Yesterday I decided to try once again and I found a new video I had never seen before called How To Fold A Fitted Sheet from a Math Guy. 

The video was made by Dr. James Tanton a Princeton graduate who grew up in Adelaide, Australia and is currently the Mathematician in Residence at the Mathematical Association of America in Washington D.C.  Turns out Dr. Tanton, who is famous for the exciting and creative methods he uses to help kids understand difficult mathematical concepts,  was just as frustrated with all those fitted sheet videos as I had been so……… he decided to make his own. 

 He did something I had never seen before in a ‘fold a fitted sheet’ video. He went backwards!! He started with a perfectly folded fitted sheet and then unfolded it step by step to see how it had been folded properly.  

Watching the process that way worked for me too!  In no time at all I had folded a fitted sheet properly for the first time! Thanks Dr. Tanton!

Other posts……….

Quilts Galore

I Don’t Make My Bed

Our European Bed

 

 

The Great Assiniboine River Canoeing Adventure

Slathering on sunscreen and getting on our life jackets for the journey

We went on a canoeing adventure with our friends Ed and Millie, paddling the Assiniboine River from Ed and Millie’s home near the perimeter highway in St. James all the way down to the dock at the end of the block where our home is located in the downtown Exchange District of Winnipeg.   

Ready for launch

Ed parked his van in our garage around noon and then we drove to Ed and Millie’s where Dave and Ed put our canoes into the water.  We decided to paddle the Mennonite way – men in one canoe and women in the other.  

Millie did a great job of steering our canoe and adjusting to my sometimes less than stellar and steady  paddling skills

The more experienced paddlers the Hildebrands provided the steering in the back of the canoes and we Driedgers sat in front. It was neat to view the city from the river perspective especially all the grand homes along the banks.  We saw deer and pelicans and herons and signs of beavers at work.  People were so friendly- saying hello, reminding us to drink water, commenting on our paddling strokes, waving and shouting greetings to us from bridges.  During the first half of our journey, the river was very shallow and we went aground a couple of times on sandbars that extended on for quite a distance.  At one point when Millie and I couldn’t seem to free ourselves from a sandbar, a kindly gentleman who lived along the water donned his hip waders and came out to help us, showing us the channel of deeper water where we could get through.  We stopped for lunch at Omands Creek Park.  Millie had made delicious cheese and vegetable biscuits and brought along some of her homemade spicy pickles from this year’s batch. Mostly though we just drank and drank- plenty of water and a little beer.  I hadn’t brought along a water bottle which was silly and I was actually a mite dizzy when we got out of the canoes at lunchtime. It was 36 degrees but during most of our journey, we had a little bit of a breeze to cool us. For the second half of our paddle, the river was much deeper, but the current was a little harder to navigate and we encountered some larger boats that created waves for our canoes. The distance from Ed and Millie’s house to ours is 15 kilometres as the crow flies so I am thinking we probably paddled at least 20 or more kilometres along our winding river route. Once we reached the dock on Waterfront Drive we loaded up the canoes one by one and returned them and then we went back to Ed and Millie’s.  Dave and Ed took a dip in the Assiniboine to refresh themselves.  Then we had appetizers and drinks down by the river in Ed and Millie’s lush and lovely back yard.  A marvellous meal of barbecued pork, kale salad and fresh garden vegetables followed and it was dark before we headed inside for a piece of Millie’s delicious homemade apple pie and ice-cream and a last glass of wine.  

It was easy to fall asleep Saturday night.  We’d had lots of exercise and fresh air, lively and interesting conversation, excellent food and a great time with good friends. 

Other posts………

Kayaking in Laos

A Serendipitous Sail

A Gourmet Sail