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…………..
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 
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!
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 on Saturday 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 kilometers as the crow flies so I am thinking we probably paddled at least 20 or more kilometers 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 marvelous 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. 
I went on a field trip last week with a group of women from my church. We all volunteer at the Selkirk MCC Thrift Store together. Marj is our leader. Her weekly news reports via e-mail keep us in touch with each other. That way even if we miss a week of volunteering we still know what’s going on with the others in our group. 
First stop of course was another Thrift Shop. This one in Morris. 
A staff member who originally hailed from Newfoundland gladly took us ‘behind the scenes’ to get a better idea of how the place worked. 
We checked out their slick price marking system. 
And took note of how they organized things that came in as donations. 
We poked around the aisles looking for bargains and….
even tried on a mink stole that was for sale. 
Then it was time to head for the Jasmine Tea Room in Altona. We were in two different vehicles and each car took a bit of a detour through the town, since both drivers had Altona roots and wanted to show us sites that had been important to them when they had lived in Altona. 
Our lunch at the Jasmine Tea Room was delicious and since we finished eating a little early……
we headed off to Altona’s Gallery in the Park 
The store staff was ever so nice to us and gave us a tour of their facilities. 
We marveled at the beautiful quilt room where material is saved and cut and sewn and stitched by many groups of volunteers. Then the quilts are displayed and sold.
On the way home we made a stop in Neubergthal, a Canadian historic site where homes and other buildings, are maintained as they might have been in a traditional Mennonite village. Here we pose on the driveway of a home that belongs to fellow members at Bethel Mennonite Church. 
The fire alarm in our building went off just before 7 am yesterday morning. Dave was away on a golf trip so I threw on my bathrobe, slipped into my moccasins , grabbed my keys and headed to the front door via five flights of stairs. I went outside to be greeted by just a few of the residents from our building’s one hundred suites. Slowly more people trickled out as the alarm kept up its insistent ringing. Everyone except me however seemed to have taken time to get fully dressed and grab their purses and phones and wallets and dogs and coffee and newspapers and study notes and books and muffins and……… 