Buttons

Victoria girls collected buttons on strings. These “charm strings” were filled with buttons given to them from, perhaps, an aunt’s wedding gown or a soldier’s uniform. “The 1000^th would be given to them by their Prince Charming,” says button fanatic Sandra Schaitberger of Pines-N-Tiques antiques shop in Minnesota.

Flea Market Style (2015)

Scribbling the Cat

In 2003, I spent 6 months working in Banff. When I left in June of that year to head back to the east coast, I was given a book as a good-bye present from one the Librarians at the Banff Centre. This book by Alexandra Fuller, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, is a memoir of life with her family living in southern Africa and has since become one of my favourite all time favourites. I have given it as a gift to many people and have re-read it, which I almost never do. Last year, I asked for her book Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness. This year for Christmas, I asked and received Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier. I loved this book. I always enjoy being taking on a journey I know I will never experience myself. For me, it is always fascinating to read about the journey that people’s lives take them on – especially when they are so vastly different from my own.

Two quotes from Scribbling the Cat:

It was the time of night that precedes dawn and is without perspective or reason. It was the hour when regret and fear overwhelm hope and courage and when all that that is ugly in us is magnified and when we are the most panic-stricken by what we have lost, and what we have almost lost, and what we fear we might lose.

I don’t think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don’t think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don’t think any of us can sit in judgement of another human being. We’re incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. It is possible – from the perspective of this quickly spinning earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin – to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don’t know if it is even useful to try.

Alexandra Fuller

Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier

Old Grey House

How many hands have touched your doors?
How many feet have walked your floors?
How many hearts are longing for this old grey house?

Old grey house down the road,

You have the saddest eyes I've ever seen,
And the wild morning-glories grow

On your shaded face where once you were green.
Sepia pictures on your walls
Long-ago secrets in your halls
Are still as the autumn leaves that fall

‘Round this old house.

Old grey house down the road,

You have the saddest eyes I've ever seen,
And they're wide open to the winds
That can take you travelling to where they've been.
Tattered white curtains flap and fly,
Waving to summer friends gone by.
I cannot pass but I feel and cry

For this old house. 

I remember we were dancing on the lawn –
We drank hot tea after midnight.

We were staying up till dawn –
There were stories by the firelight,

Warm friends on a winter's night
And swordfights with the icicles that clung

To this old house.

Old grey house down the road,

You have the saddest eyes that I've ever seen.
Now they're boarded up and blind
To the life that was and what might have been.
Old apple trees root deep in sod,
Reaching their naked arms to God.
Forgotten fruit will bud one day

‘Round this old house.

- Margie Carmichael

And My Name Is...Stories from the Quilt

It happens to the best of them

"Madiba was scheduled to address the Palestinian parliament on the day before our departure. Prof. Gerwel edited the speech back in South Africa and emailed the new version to me. I didn’t have time to read it and somehow a virus of some sort crept into the computer program. The last sentence of the speech ended with a mathematical formula. Madiba also didn’t read the final edits and as a result he read out the maths at the end of the speech. It was in letters and, although I cannot remember the exact words, it was something like: “For every two equals four minus seven times eight. I thank you”. We were all puzzled but after his speech the entire Palestinian parliament rose to their feet in resounding applause. The speech was translated simultaneously and either the translator didn’t the maths formula or translated it into something profound. We were all surprised by this occurrence of this virus but amused by the fact that no one picked up on it. Prof. And I had many laughs about this incident for years to follow".

Good Morning Mr.Mandela: A Memoir

-       Zelda la Grange

Starfish, green paint, and a flip flop

I should be prepping for my job interview this coming week. And I am sick of going over a presentation I will give for my ADM this Tuesday. Instead, I write about home. The Island. The farm. My favorite place. 

In April, I sojourned to the Island. For the first time in a long time, I celebrated Easter at home. There was church – a lot of church. There was also a lot of family time, laughter, story telling (some new – most old) and there was a lot of Molly time. It was wonderful. In my heart, I am still there.

The first order of business was painting the living room. At Christmas, Mom mentioned she was thinking of painting it. I jumped at the chance to do it with her. Painting a large room is not fun. Painting a large room with my mother, however, was a ball. The living room had been a grey color for almost twenty years and there had been many favorable comments about the color over the years. It contrasted lovely with the white crown molding. But after twenty years, Mom was ready for a change. So the grey was changed to a green and we did it in one day: two coats, the crown molding (that remained white), as well as a touch up to a kitchen wall. 

Were were squirelly by the end? – Yes.

Did I perform a major flip flop (e.g.: fall down) in the process of painting? – Yes.

Did we laugh a lot? – Yes.

Would I do it again? – In a heartbeat.

Before:

After:

The next day I got up only to discover Mom still had the paint brush in hand. She confessed to just doing “touch ups” and I understand now that once you get started, it is hard to get stopped. Sometimes, the smallest change can make such a difference. In the bathroom, for example, Mom painted a small shelf white, and it gave that wall such a fresh new look. I also insisted two pieces of Mom’s art be hung in the washroom. These two beach scenes further contributed to the room’s beachy feel. I also re-organized a small shelf with some new finds I dragged home from Toronto, and added a new toilet cover tank that I made – a small hooked rug piece.

Upon completion of the big paint job, we realized that every room in the house, with the exception of Mom & Dad's room, is some shade of green (Yes, we are Irish). Plans are already underway to paint Pierre's room next.

Mandela moment

This week I took a webinar from the Queen’s School of Business entitled “Lessons in Leadership from the Life of Nelson Mandela”. It was presented by South African Professor Dr. Julian Barling. It was very interesting and the session passed quickly. In a nut shell, here are the ten lessons in leadership from the life of Madiba that were discussed:

1.    Role modelling your vision.

2.    Know and respect the opposition.

3.    Influencing your opposition is more important than rallying your supporters.

4.    Reciprocity – the fundamental principle of effective persuasion.

5.    The power of many.

6.    It’s never too late for wonderful leadership.

7.    Is leadership born or made?

8.    Humility builds respect.

9.    Your successor (developing your successor is important)

10. Leadership is about moments, and the smallest possible things you do in those moments.

In everything discussed, there was one thing about Madiba’s leadership that I had not heard before. That was his failure to address the pandemic of AIDS, recognized as Mandela’s biggest failure during his tenure as President of South Africa. The reasons for this were discussed – age, cultural beliefs, etc. It wasn't until his own son died of AIDS in 2005, when the disease affected him personally, that Mandela addressed and took a leadership role in the AIDS pandemic. This of course speaks to number six above - it is never too late for wonderful leadership:

Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like tuberculosis, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of HIV/AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary. (Nelson Mandela)

I continue to be intrigued by every facet of this man’s life. In the webinar, Professor Barling talked about “Mandela moments”. These moments when everyday people like myself met him, and he made them feel special. He made them feel like he was excited to meet them. He made a “moment” in that person’s life they will never forget.

Sometimes I still have to pinch myself when I think about my Mandela moment. In the summer of 2006, I was chosen to participate in an Internship at his Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa. On a Friday morning, three weeks upon my arrival in Jo’Berg, I was led into his office and was given the opportunity to meet this great leader and shake his head. Yeah, this farm kid from rural PEI had a Mandela moment. I still wonder how my life brought me to that moment. However I got there, I am grateful.

When I got home from work the day he died last December, I can’t say I was surprised to hear the news. His health had been in decline for quite some time. When anyone lives to be 95, it should be celebrated, yet I couldn’t help be a little sad. Let’s face it; the world needs people like Madiba. It’s always hard to let these people go.

As I sat there and watched the TV coverage from South Africa, I was happy to see the people that gathered outside his home in Houghton singing in celebration. He would have loved that. I then recalled his 88^th birthday celebrations in 2006 and I got out my photos from that day. I had never posted any of these photos on social media with the exception of one blog post a few years ago. So, I posted a photo to my Facebook (FB) page to share it with friends and family. It was a photo of Madiba cutting his birthday cake surrounded by staff of his Foundation. And I am standing in the back row.

What happened next still boggles my mind.

My brother David had never seen this photo before so he proudly shared it on his FB page. Because he is PEI’s Fire Marshal, a lot of media personalities are contacts on his FB page. Literally within hours, I was contacted by CBC Radio (Charlottetown). I agreed to do a five minute interview the following morning. It went well. Radio interviews are always so much easier. I had done a couple of radio interviews with Matt Rainnie in the past and it always went smoothly. As soon as I was finished, though, they asked if I would consider taping another short segment for the CBC (Charlottetown) supper hour news. D’oh. My immediate typical introvert reaction was to (a) dig in my heels or (b) bolt. Bolting is even easier to do on the phone. But I thought of my Mom and Dad and that they would probably want me to do it. So I agreed. I asked my manager to take ½ vacation to make the trek down to the CBC studios on Front Street to do the taping. When she heard what I was going to be doing, she told me I could do it on work time and after the interview was over, I could work the rest of the day from home!! Like the radio interview, the CBC news segment was short. I enjoyed talking to Bruce Rainnie and I brought up his recent book (Thank you David for giving this to me last Christmas!!). Before I knew it, it was done – in one take. I wiped off my lipstick and got untangled from my microphones. What *was* cool, was that it was taped in the main newsroom. I had been in that room once before with a friend who used to work at the CBC, but never did I think I would ever be taking anything for the news here.

I went home that afternoon and was glad it was over. Or so I thought. I wasn’t home an hour when the PEI Guardian newspaper contacted me. I did that interview right away to get it behind me. And I was done. I am seriously shy by nature and the older I get, the more introverted I get. All I could think was, “How do people do this every day?”

Friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances all left kind responses on my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter sites. Just when I thought it was over, my fellow Archivist and mentor Loryl MacDonald sent the link to my radio interview out over the Archan-l listserv. This resulted in my Director and Assistant Deputy Minister (the Archivist of Ontario) also finding out about this Mandela moment of mine. I can’t remember who initiated it – it may very well have been my Manager – but I was contacted for another interview by MGS (Ministry of Government Services – my ministry) Communications. So another article appeared there, as well as on the Intranet of the OPS (Ontario Public Service).

It was *my* Mandela moment, but in all these interviews, I was able to take my family and my community on a fun ride. After the interviews and articles, so many people called my parents, which sincerely touched me. That’s what it is like when you grow up in a small town. Many were proud that a local gal had been able to have this experience. Although I found the entire thing rather stressful, it felt great to do this for my family. My Mom, Dad, brothers, sister-in-law, aunts, uncles and cousins all seemed to get a real kick out of it.

And I’m just glad I didn’t fawk up.

Here is the photo that started it all. Rest in peace Tata. at hwat