THIS AND THAT

Yesterday I had a very busy day, first attending the A.G. M. of the Travel Writer's Association, then dashing off from there to the Vancouver Museum for a special reception held in honor of the Downtown Memory Project. I blogged something about this last May, including the little contribution I had made about starting my career as a journalist in the Vancouver Sun editorial department. The framed contributions were first on display downtown in the Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre campus but this weekend they moved to the Museum to be part of a Vancouver history project on display there. Here's a picture of me posed beside my framed story. I feel it's quite an honor to be up there among a lot of other excellent stories about the Downtown East Side of Vancouver. AFter the reception, my friend and I toured around some of the exhibits, mainly one about the history of Stanley Park. But one that I loved visiting was the little mummy that used to be upstairs in the old Carnegie library back when I first came to the city when I was a 12 year old. I used to go to the library almost every weekend and climb up the marble spiral stairway to the top where they had this tiny museum display. It was the first mummy I'd ever seen and it was a child! Now they have done some DNA testing and investigating and identified it by name from a Greek inscription on the mummy's wrapping. It's a 10 year old boy (very tiny). I should have written down his name but I forgot. However, I'll go back again and have another look as there's lots to see in the Museum.

I've also been busy taking myself on little field trips to do some investigating around the various neighbourhoods for my Planet Eye writings. This is one of the very old art-deco movie theatres in Kitsilano. There's still a couple of these old theatres left in the city, mostly privately owned. And they still show movies. Check out my Planet Eye stories in the coming weeks for stories about the neighbourhoods, including my own 'hood, The Drive. I spent the entire day on Friday writing and researching bits for the Planet Eyes stories...I mean, I wrote and worked on this from about 11 in the morning to 11 at night with very few breaks. It was a bleak, rainy day on Friday so I enjoyed just hunkering down and getting things done.

I usually carry my camera around with me and this Autumn the leaves have been particularly brilliant. This is a street scene in my neighbhourhood. It was an overcase and partly rainy day but still the colors are quite vibrant. I love this time of year and this Fall has been especially lovely.

Now we begin a new week and this morning I will work on the novel, do some editing, and post a couple more small stories for Planet Eye. (www.planeteye.com -- I am the Vancouver Expert.) It's been a busy weekened and I have one more week of classes before the break. However I'll be continuing for a few weeks with my Wednesday Life Writing group which I enjoy a lot. However, there will be lots of time coming up for me to get busy with the novel again.