Kittens and Hendrix
I’ve been absent from The Treehouse for about a month. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind here at the non-virtual Treehouse. My housemate has moved, I have a musician friend staying with me, phones and cameras are breaking, and seedlings are bursting at the seams of their newspaper starter pots. As well, my outdoor property maintenance contracts have started up again, as has outdoor music season. (Bring it on, Summer!!)
I have many things to post, but for now, please accept this video of Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child, performed by Dodie Goldney & the Instamatics at a main street gig this past Saturday:
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with Gary Mockford, Leon Racicot, and Lyle Shephard
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I also set up a static home page for this blog last month, which turned out to be a bigger chunk of work to keep up than I wanted. I’m abandoning it and going back to the old format. This means manually updating the navigation in all my old posts, so please bear with me and also accept this snapshot of a friend’s mama cat and her SEVEN (!!!) two-day old kittens (aka, the big puddle of stripes):
Heavy Metal Minuets
source unknown
When people ask me who my influences are as a singer, I don’t think they expect my first answer to be Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson.
The first time I heard Iron Maiden, it was something like 11:30 on a Sunday night in 1982. I was living in Vancouver, BC, and listening to a radio show that played imported heavy metal records. The song had just been released. It was called Run to the Hills [click for song].
It was like nothing that ever existed before.
I hopped two buses after school the next day to search for it at an import record shop downtown. (I’ve already mentioned that I wasn’t like other girls when it came to music.)
Jane of All Trades
When I’m on a renovation job, sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to be doing when I walk in the door. On any given day, I might be using a nail gun and a compressor to pin down a board. I might be ripping up floors with a crowbar. I might be 14 feet up a ladder painting walls.
I don’t think I’ve ever done this on a job before, though:
Tiny Paintings
Just a quick mid-week post to show off some of my mom’s artwork. These three paintings are only 4×6″, painted on heavy watercolour paper – not sure of the thickness, but thick. 🙂 They are actually greeting cards.
The colours on the one above astound me. I looked outside one day this past winter and thought – those ARE the colours! My mom got it perfect.
The colours on this painting by fellow blogger Nicholas Herbert are a similar wintery scheme.
Hermits United
11×14″ – pastel on paper
My musical mentor calls Sunday his “sacred day.” Though he doesn’t really practice any religion, he is very much aware, after a week of worldly intrusions, of the need for a day of rest from external stimuli. A day to honour what is important to his spirit.
Since I never expect to hear back from my mentor on a Sunday, I made these cookies for him Saturday instead. This is an update of the recipe I posted a couple of weeks ago:
Convergence and Community
I took this shot yesterday, on my bike ride home from work. This is the Thompson River, looking west, viewed from the north shore of Kamloops, BC.
Kamloops is a place divided – socially, economically, and politically – into three distinct areas by its rivers. “My side” of town, the north shore, is like New Jersey to the south shore, if the south shore were New York. Most of the New Yorkers don’t like to come across the bridge to New Jersey, so it’s a bit of a hermit’s paradise over here. 😉
I *heart* New York. But like Bruce Springsteen, I’m happiest living in New Jersey.
Blood Sacrifice
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I’ve been sick for a few days, so instead of Guitars and Sunflowers, Part Two, or some big, rambly, philosophical post about creativity, I’m posting the photos I promised of (some of) the finished floor at the renovation job I’m on. This is the flooring I am hoping to put in the Treehouse sometime this year. (It’s going in, I’m just not sure when yet!)
My co-worker and I got this basement room done today:
Guitars and Sunflowers, Part One
with Gary Mockford
I first picked up the guitar when I was fourteen. It was this guitar.
No, actually, it was an acoustic guitar. But I DID get this guitar when I was fourteen. My mom bought it for me, from a co-worker who was getting married. I thought this lady was mad to give up such a thing because she was getting married! I think it had to do with money and travel, but at the time, I was chafed.
This is how I looked with it in the living room as a teenager:
Coleus Roots and Crazypants Time
A friend just brought me these ivy cuttings tonight (in the white pitcher). I can’t identify the variety, but it has strange curly leaves, like it went out and got a perm.
When I put the ivy in water to root, I finally checked on the coleus cuttings I took ten days ago. I discovered they already have a zillion little centimetre-long roots:
In the ‘Loops
two roads diverged in a yellow wood
Kamloops comes from the Secwepemc (Shuswap) word “Tk’əmlúps.” It means “meeting of the waters.”
This long weekend, I spent a lot of time riding. I love hitting the trails in Overlander Park, at the meeting of the waters. (This is why my wheels are bent.) This is where the North and South Thompson rivers converge into the Thompson:
The Treehouse by Dodie Goldney 