Walking the Llama

Big bright sun yesterday, all day, accompanied by a crisp 30-ish degrees temperature.  Well, it's still January, if barely, so what can we expect?  We used the occasion of the sun, however, to arrange to take Lily the Llama out for a walk by the ocean.

First, you have to get the halter on her, which is neither easy nor hard.  She might be willing to let you put it on her or she might not.  You might have to wait a while until she expresses the willingness.  But you mostly just stand around while she prances back and forth, watching you very carefully, I guess to figure out what you have in mind.  My impression of llamas (based solely upon my experience with Lily: how about generalizing from an N of 1?) is that they regard humans as an inferior species with some possible interest as entertainment, although mostly not.  She will come over to me and put her face right up to mine and breathe in little snorts, and sometimes she kind of puts her lips on my face, which feels fairly friendly.  But, after a few seconds of that, she walks away as if I have dismally failed some kind of test of interest.

Anyway, Ed stood around with the halter in his hand and she bounced around mostly at a goodly distance.  Occasionally, she'd come right up to him, but when she got within his reach, she bounced away very quickly again.  After about 20 minutes or so of this, we decided that she wasn't going to submit to the halter and got ourselves ready to leave.  And as we made to leave, she came over to Ed and he put the halter on her easily.  Ed's view is that she was just goofing around and suddenly realized that if she didn't stop she was going to lose her chance to go for a walk on the beach.

So we walked her on the beach, or Ed did, anyway.  I just moved along with them, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind.  We ran into a few other walkers who stopped of course and took their measure of Lily while she took her measure of them.  They all seemed okay to her as far as I could tell.  When she's not wearing a halter, she is pretty standoffish.  But with the halter on, she was all over us.  When we'd stop for a bit, she'd lean her head over to me or to Ed, and we'd be standing there, head to head, or neck to neck, just being buddies.  Normally, she wouldn't be the least bit anxious to have me putting my arm around her neck or patting her on the head.  But on the beach walk, she even let the random beach walkers pat her.

Of course patting her on the head requires some height.  When she and Ed are walking together, the top of her ears are about on a par with the top of  his hair, which is in the 6-foot range.  She's really big and taking her out for a walk really isn't like taking a dog out.  She doesn't strain at the leash or have some kind of agenda of her own.  She's just with you out for a walk.  Nice day, you know?

And that's what we do in Point Roberts on a sunny day in the winter.

Disappearing, Appearing

Updated below.

The other night, I was at a book club meeting and I was interested to hear a couple of the other attendees discussing how they hadn't seen one another for ages, in fact had hardly seen anyone for ages.  (The book club meets monthly, so it couldn't have been too long.)  In a place this small, you get used to seeing people here or there regularly, but I was pleased to have that conversation confirm my sense that January is the month for disappearing.

But that may be all about to end.  Tonight, Trinity Lutheran Church re-starts its concert schedule with a jazz ensemble from Trinity Western University bringing itself up to the Point to liven us up.  The church,  in the nature of its being, is usually raising funds for some needed community good that the County wouldn't be in the business of providing, and at the moment they need to get the Church organ's problems remedied.

The concert is one of a long series; the Church arranged and sponsored almost thirty concerts in 2010.  The arranging work is done by Lucy Williams who is like the Sol Hurok of Point Roberts (if anybody still remembers who Sol Hurok was).  It's probably a largely thankless task except for the fact that those who attend enjoy the music.  It certainly amazes me that she is able so regularly to find really talented musicians who want to come to entertain us.  My guess is that they all perform for free because there are those charitable objects that need the money raised by the concerts; and then there is the fact that the price of a ticket is left up to each attendee.  Lucy clearly has spent too much time listening to National Public Radio when considering a funding model.  But we are all grateful to her: she brings us the sounds of joy at a price we can afford.

Update: We walked down to the church last evening in the misting rain and were indeed treated to a wonderful performance.  Six young men from Trinity Western University in Langley (but I don't know whether that's the U.S. Langley or the Canadian Langley) just knocked themselves out for us for a little over an hour.  They were having such a good time it was hard not to feel we ought to be able to pull out our instruments and join them in the fun, except for the fact that we don't actually play any instruments.  Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter and Thelonius Monk pieces rocketed out of them and I don't know that the church itself will quite be the same after hearing all that.  The only downside was that the place wasn't packed with audience.  I imagine Lucy will invite them back and if you are in the vicinity you shouldn't miss it.  

Vancouver Adventure

Months--even a year--can go by without our getting up to Vancouver proper, whose heart is only about 20 miles away from us here in Point Roberts.  There's the traffic, there's the parking problem, there's the fact that I like it where I am and that the internet can deliver unto to me most of the things I might need so I don't really need to do much shopping in the 3D world.  Nevertheless, we did make the adventure trip on Tuesday.

The weather people had promised us partly sunny.  Unfortunately, the part that was sunny was not anywhere between Point Roberts and Vancouver central.  Very grey and in and out rain all the way.  It seemed very adventurous until the traffic made it seem a little more in the oppressive field, but we continued on to Granville Island where I longed for some linen supplies, and then we drove on to various places where Ed was chasing photographs.

He has a series of photographs taken thirty years ago by a well-known Canadian photographer and he is trying to retake the photos, to document the changes over that time.  He's been in touch with the photographer who has given him some sense of where he took the pictures, but it is not exact: e.g., Broadway, somewhere between Renfrew and Rupert.  Not an enormous distance, but still, after 35 years, hard to track down.  And then, we suddenly thought, 'maybe he was shooting south, not north?'  Indeed, a puzzlement.

It was about a 5-hour adventurous trip in all and I was reminded once again how living in Point Roberts, mostly staying in Point Roberts and the near environs, causes one to lose track of what cities are really like: how many people there are, how many buildings, how much color clash, how close together everything is.  It surely lacks a sense of harmony.  I was reading a survey of 20-somethings the other day and how they overwhelmingly looked forward to living in a city environment with all the action that promises.  While, doubtless, the 60-somethings are thinking about sun and trees and water.  Ah, we live, we learn.

Failure to Rise Yesterday

Nope, failed to rise for the birthday event, though the children and one grandchild (bless her!) called or wrote.  More rain, deep grey skies.  The back yard is desperately soggy.  Such that one can imagine whoever in the state supervises wetlands would soon be coming around for a supervisory look-see, not to mention the strong possibility of flocks of mallards moving in to glide about on the little pools, becoming resident wild livestock.

But, today we are going up to Vancouver to see how it is faring, which may be rising to the occasion but just a day late.

And for the birthday?  Well, here is what I made new for the world in my 74th year.  Not bad for a year with other calls on my time as well.  That's what you get when you live in a tiny townlet, I think: lots of time to use as you want.

Still Here

Well, I got nothing. It's cold and grey and a bit damp and working its way up to frost or snow. Good weather for cooking comfort foods (bread, chocolate-orange-pecan cake, bran muffins, chicken soup), and for reading good novels (Never Let Me Go, The Echo Makers), and for watching odd but interesting movies (Jack Goes Boating, Ride the High Country). Otherwise, it's a bit like being a hibernating bear that's inexplicably wakened way too early.

Maybe next week we will become more lively. My 74th birthday arrives on Monday (I'm the oldest living member of my family, so no one is left who remembers the original event) and perhaps I can rise to the occasion.

January Blues

January is perhaps the quietest month in Point Roberts. It's usually the coldest month, of course, and that doesn't help, but beyond that it's just kind of dim. Nothing much happens. Last January, we, personally, were being catapulted into a medical adventure, which made January anything but dim, and some people are obviously getting to have that kind of experience this January, too. In fact, only the other night, we heard the sound of the medevac helicopter coming into the fire station, and thought about that poor family that was having way more excitement than is good for anyone.

But, such experiences notwithstanding, it is plenty quiet around. Lots of people have taken off for the winter. About a quarter of our quilt group disappears at this time of year to places with more natural heat. I checked the Community Events Sign this afternoon, and there are no events. I looked at the bulletin board at the International Market, and found that there were plenty of empty spaces for announcements. In fact, so much space that there were two copies of one announcement posted. That just wouldn't be an accurate description of the bulletin board any other month. Very quiet at the library today, too: only me and the librarians while I was there.

BUT, there is yet one very lively place in town. Both last Saturday and the Saturday before that, I drove by one of the private mail companies and the line of people waiting to pick up packages was way out to the street both days. Around Christmas, this would not be surprising. But half-way through January?

Apparently our neighbors to the North are using their credit cards overtime in the U.S. All the cars parked round the package center had Canadian plates. Saturday is the day you have time to drive down to P.R. and get gas, butter, and your most recent cross-border internet purchases, I'm guessing. The U.S. and Canadian dollars are pretty much of equal value these days, so this may be an excellent time to shop if Canadian dollars is what you are long in. Also a good time to fight back against January's dreariness.

We've been being frugal since the fall of 2008, but apparently now we're tired of it. We have frugality fatigue, and when you put January on top of that, well, No Wonder! they're lining up at the package delivery center. Point Roberts used to be the place that Canadians came to to drink. Now, it's more like to pick up their shopping.

Good Looking

We were down in Bellingham this past week.  I don 't go there all that often and I don't know many parts of the town...the malls, the hospital, Cordata, the Co-op, the Hardware Store, and Trader Joe's are where I'm most acquainted.  So, this may not be a judgment that generalizes to Bellingham itself, but James St. has the most appealingly painted stretch of houses that I may have ever seen.  It's not that the houses themselves are spectacular architectural wonders: they're mostly small and older.  But they all are freshly painted in interesting and effective color combinations (just paint and trim combinations).  And they seem always to look as if they had just been painted yesterday.  Those houses come with some sort of covenant that requires annual paint jobs?  Unlikely.  An entire neighborhood of compulsive paint renewers?  Probably not.  Maybe just neighborhood standards that are encouraging of everyone to step up to the aesthetic?  More possible.

It made me feel some need to paint our house which definitely is not looking spritely sprightly (thanks to stephen for the correction).  I don't know that the neighborhood would respond similarly, but I would feel the better for it having been done and next January I would definitely be happy to see it looking fresh, and January almost always could use every bit of cheering possible.  I did repaint the (antique)  front door last summer, so maybe a whole new house paint job could be in my spring or summer.  Obviously, a lot of color schemes to choose from.