sled

today's the day: i have resolved to buy a sled to drag my groceries on...not the dog-driven variety (my dog would immediately & gleefully pitch into the deep snow near the river if i tried that) but an inexpensive plastic round sled. i've seen people transporting groceries, beer, electronic equipment, children, luggage, and dogfood on these sleds, and a bit of research indicates that for 10 bucks at the hardware store i too can acquire a sled...and when i'm not dragging groceries around, i can go sledding down the hill behind the house.

moose tufting

There’s an art form up here called “moose tufting” --a very 19th-century kind of craft, reminds me of a Paris exhibition I saw a few years ago that involved Victorian "hair" art, woven jewelry out of human hair. moose tufting is more elegant: you take tufts of moose fur, arrange it in clumps against fabric, cut the clumps down to form flower patterns, and dye the fur. curiously, tufting only developed after Europeans arrived in the North, though looking at it, tufting does look very floral-English rather than the more geometric designs in beading & other First Nations art up here.

market-o-matic

spent some time this weekend applying for a theatre grant, and despite what people might think, grants take time & energy. yes, working in the arts really does involve WORKING...but to sooth the tired grant-writing soul, there is this truly hilarious site, the market-o-matic (kudos to performer Emily Pearlman, who first sent Bremner the link). the site creates an artist statement specially tailored just for you, though i refuse to be responsible for the results if you use the thing for a grant application...

wallpaper

the haggis has been piped in, poems have been read, tartan worn & gold rush old-timers remembered; the Double Bob was thoroughly & appropriately celebrated in Dawson City last night. this photo is in honour of Robert Service, from the inside of a modern-day Dawson saloon (the caribou horns are enormous, and wallpaper is straight from a dancehall girl's boudoir).

fiddle

turns out I was completely wrong about the band that plays weekend nights at the Pit...it is not a thrash metal band but one of the last great Canadian bar bands. on Friday Rae Spoon sat in for a few songs (above, in stripes & snowboots). for the last set, Willy (in Yankees cap & bare feet) took down his fiddle from the wall and 'round about midnight, things were really hopping...

Double Bob

tomorrow night is the "Double Bob" celebration: a dinner organized by the library in honour of local poet Robert Service & Scot nationalist Robert Burns --both born in late January. i guess that shows you how many Scots were in the Klondike gold rush, to have Burns day being celebrated out here in Dawson! Sz is spending the day making haggis (that surprisingly tasty dish involving an inside-out sheep) and Bremner is practising his Scottish brogue...

curling

curling: a game played with granite stones and brooms on ice, originating in medieval Scotland. but it's a classically Canadian game (the oldest sports club in North America is the Montreal curling club...those Scots, once global warming eliminated their annual ice in Scotland in the early 1800s, had to came over to Montreal to find a place to hurl granite rocks at each other).

above, a photo of a bunch of artists and musicians learning to curl at the Dawson arena...those mops we're holding are actually essential equipment to sweep the ice. what we lacked in finesse, we made up for in enthusiasm. amazingly, no noses or kneecaps were broken, even though the granite stones are REALLY heavy.

Bigfoot

further on wolverines…I learned today that they are actually on the endangered list for North America, although in the Yukon wolverines are doing well, especially in the Old Crow region just north of here (things aren’t so great in Alaska, apparently). I was listening to David Henry, a conservation ecologist, on CBC; he describes the wolverine as being similar to the grizzly bear! it’s the biggest weasel in the world, with the largest feet-to-body ratio of any mammal anywhere…so the wolverine is actually BigFoot.