After Sunday Morning Surf Session

Bob taking a break in the screen house while "listening" to Car Talk.

Summer | July 23

The Great Blue Heron

As I wandered on the beach
I saw the heron standing
Sunk in the tattered wings
He wore as a hunchback’s coat.
Shadow without a shadow,
Hung on invisible wires
From the top of a canvas day,
What scissors cut him out?
Superimposed on a poster
Of summer by the strand
Of a long-decayed resort,
Poised in the dusty light
Some fifteen summers ago;
I wondered, an empty child,
“Heron, whose ghost are you?”

I stood on the beach alone,
In the sudden chill of the burned.
My thought raced up the path.
Pursuing it, I ran
To my mother in the house.
And led her to the scene.
The spectral bird was gone.
But her quick eye saw him drifting
Over the highest pines
On vast, unmoving wings.
Could they be those ashen things,
So grounded, unwieldy, ragged,
A pair of broken arms
That were not made for flight?
In the middle of my loss
I realized she knew:
My mother knew what he was.

O great blue heron, now
That the summer house has burned
So many rockets ago,
So many smokes and fires
And beach-lights and water-glow
Reflecting pinwheel and flare:
The old logs hauled away,
The pines and driftwood cleared
From that bare strip of shore
Where dozens of children play;
Now there is only you
Heavy upon my eye.
Why have you followed me here,
Heavy and far away?
You have stood there patiently
For fifteen summers and snows,
Denser than my repose,
Bleaker than any dream,
Waiting upon the day
When, like gray smoke, a vapor
Floating into the sky,
A handful of paper ashes,
My mother would drift away.

BY CAROLYN KIZER

Calgary | July 8

OK, this is the second time I've written this because my computer ate the first try.

We started the day with a visit to Southcenter, a shopping center client of ours in Calgary. During Stampede, it's tradition to serve free breakfasts. It's said you can go the whole week and not pay to eat because there's always some free meal going on. Southcentre gets about 8,000 people to come out and stand in line for over an hour for a paper plate with two pancakes and a sausage link. It's astounding.

We were asked if we wanted to show up at 7am and help serve. We declined. But they do all start drinking right away.

Later we took the train downtown to The Palamino. We ate barbeque, drank and listened (at times) to a band.

Stampede Roundup
Eventually it was time for the big show. Stampede Roundup. This is basically a big concert. Lots of corporate sponsored tents and such. The lineup was Loverboy, Our Lady Peace (which I'd never heard of but enjoyed) and The Steve Miller Band.



We spent a lot of time running into corporate tents uninvited because we experienced periodic downpours, tornado warnings and honest to God hail. But other than that it was fun. But the big event was The Steve Miller Band, which we left during the first song because everyone was cold, wet, tired and hungry.

Some people call me the Space Cowboy....

Calgary | July 7

Stampede
I got up at 3:45am and have been traveling for 15 hours. We've just arrived in Canada for Stampede, what they call "The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth." I was told it was a combination of a Rodeo and Mardi Gras. In reality, it's mostly a large group of people dressed in cowboy costumes (fake hats and plaid shirts) getting drunk, with a few rodeo cowboys thrown in for good measure.

On the day we arrived we went to the Stampede Grounds and had a nice infield suite to watch the Chuck Wagon Races. Now this is a dangerous sport. I saw an accident on the back stretch where a rear horse went down and had to be euthanized right there on the track, behind a curtain of blue tarps.

Then we went to a place called Cowboys. It was like a large warehouse with two levels of bars and a stage. Mostly young people, the highlight are young, well-proportioned girls who serve shots in interesting ways. They are definitely not hiring for brains.

On My Way To Stampede | July 7

Flying to Calgary to witness Stampede, the Rodeo event of the year.