At the border (Sweetgrass) the bored Canadian officer didn’t even want to see my birth certificate, which is really quite splendid since it’s the full-page original with gold seal and my teeny footprints. In fact, I joked that it was the same age as me but it looked a lot better. (Sue suggested that maybe if I wore a gold seal...)
Lethbridge is a major city, bigger than any in Montana, and I stopped at my favorite bookstore: ABC Books which has tumbles and stacks and towers of books everywhere and also a little white grandmother bunny named “Blossom,” two quite social cockatiels, and some unidentified reptiles. The owner told me about his favorite customer, now deceased, a polymath who bought Chinese philosophy among other things. I had a bracing cup of coffee at the Wings of the Dove Christian Bookstore two doors down and used their powder room which had elegantly painted inspirational sentences on the wall and a big bouquet of silk magnolias.
Then I set out for Fort Macleod, thinking it was a truck route and would probably be cleared. I had not bet on hundred mile an hour winds blowing snow over the road at a temperature that mixed water and ice. Ten miles would be dry as summer, then another half mile of tractionless adrenaline-shooting life-risk -- while the 18-wheelers zoomed through the slush, throwing it all up on my windshield. If I’d hit the ditch then, at least I’d never have seen it coming.
When I got to Fort Macleod, I talked to the police chief who said that if I could make it to Claresholm, I would be safe the rest of the way. He was right. I also found out my gas card wouldn’t work in Canada. Evidently Esso and Exxon are not getting along. (Chavez is mad at Exxon, too.) In Calgary the roads had been graveled so traction was good but visibility was intermittent because mud was being thrown up everywhere. I also gained some windshield dings. I hadn’t gotten a good mesh between my gas station road map and my Google-generated map to McConnell’s house, but I managed to blunder across the two rivers, past the Stampede grounds, past the Unitarian church, past the University of Calgary, and to the right house only five minutes late.
McConnells and I became friends through the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment listserv on the Internet. When they come down this way, they stop for tea and scones. We have many life experiences in common, are about the same age, and share interests. They’ve lived on the West Coast and in Saskatoon. Sue cooked the perfect meal for diabetics: roast, three veggies, lots of nuts. Clyde was pleased because it was a colorful meal! (They’re both originally art majors.) Orange carrots, green peas, etc. Sue noticed there was no red, so fetched a tomato!
CELESTE
Celeste, who is visiting, is a sandy-colored muscular little cat with huge ears and eyes who surely must be carrying some of the originally evolved desert genes. Boots, a satiny black cat with a splendid plume of a tail and a neat little white bib is in permanent residence and came to watch Celeste chase her cat toy. Celeste spent part of the night sleeping with me, but she’s a very busy cat.
Next morning Sue came up with a fancy brand of oatmeal full of flax, wheat germ, sunflower seeds, and other nutritious things. She came with me as guide through Calgary traffic and reassurance in the parking labyrinth which always gives me flashes of old sinister movies. The museum staff was ready, provided coffee and a welcome, and we stopped to give a rub to the bust of Colonel Harvie which Bob had made. It was the Colonel’s oil fortune that paid for the museum.
The presentation went beautifully. Friends and colleagues were in the audience, everyone laughed at my jokes and we projected the Ed Mitch DVD of Bob talking about his work onto a huge wall where it was VERY impressive. The University of Calgary Press arrived en masse -- they simply locked the office door and all came! I’d never met any of them, so when they were standing in a circle introducing themselves to the host, I just got on the end of the line. Great to have faces for all the names!
At lunch we were all feeling like family and the event had become so much like a book launch that we all went to lunch in a posh hotel where we were seated at a high table in the bar and ordered very fancy things like “summer squash ravioli” and “southwest corn soup.” No alcohol, lots of coffee. I don’t know who picked up the tab -- it wasn’t me. The Glenbow host was there, as well as Sue and my fellow writer Ray Djuff.
Sue piloted me back down to the street -- after a brief blunder when we all suddenly found ourselves in the restaurant kitchen -- and headed me south. This time I had used Sue’s laptop (Oh, sigh! What a terrific little instrument: a Mac of the white and ice persuasion!) to get the highway report and stayed to the east far enough to dodge all the problems. Summer-dry roads, no trucks, zippety doodah. At Sweetgrass the American officer examined my birth certificate VERY carefully and agreed that I had cute little feet. On to Shelby where I stopped at Pamida to buy drain opener, hoping that I wouldn’t need it. The toilet was stopped up when I left, but I thought it might be merely frozen and open itself while I was gone.
It did not. I had 358 new messages, almost entirely SPAM. The cats rushed to greet -- not me, but the pickiup! I know they were hoping to hurt my feelings for leaving them overnight! Among the messages were anguished cries from a dozen friends who had just gotten emails from Amazon saying that my book was not available! I tried Barnes & Noble who said the same thing. Has the Industrial Cowboy Art Cartel found a way to stifle me? Or is it the kafuffle over international book prices now that loonies are at par? Or is it the fact that Amazon was selling the book at an excellent price and suddenly realized that they were selling a LOT of copies and losing profit? (Hundreds of books were pre-ordered.)
Dunno. Used my camping potty and went to bed. Woke up when the carbon monoxide monitor shrieked at 5AM. No carbon mono. It shrieked because the electricity had died. Outside there is an ice storm raging. Back to sleep. At 5:30AM, the monitor shrieked again because the electricity came back on. Started coffee and ten minutes later another shriek as it all died again. I think I’d better bring in my camp stove. Another ten minutes and the electricity was back, and the newspaper came. We don’t have boys delivering papers: we have a tough woman in a hoodie. Just in time for two cups of coffee and a lot of boring news. Now back to bed. Then I’ll work on the toilet some more.
One of this morning’s message was that my cousin’s husband, our much loved “Ham” (short for Hamilton), might have a curable kind of lymphoma instead of a racing version of lung cancer. While the electricity was off, I stood at the kitchen picture window for a while. With all the town lights blacked out, the sky was full of stars.
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