Saturday, March 28, 2009

Portland and upcoming peregrinations


This year is filling with travel, not all with the car, which is repaired, but now has its navigation system compromised. Alice takes Wiwaxia to Portland next week for the exhibition, Cultural Sensibilities IV at the Littman Gallery at Portland State University, [April 3-29] with a week of feasts and activities with women artists from Korea and Portland. This image is of the work Alice will show, "O Rubor Sanguinis: Tu Flos Es," 1996, also the cover of the Medieval Women's Choir's first cd of music by Hildegard von Bingen.
Robin leaves for Egypt on April 7, and will return to Olympia in mid May after a month there and two weeks in Jordan.
Then there's a possible trip to DC in June for a conference for Jim and some patriotic gushing if Alice goes, too.
Our most significantly fun trip will be to Banff in August for a 100th anniversary conference celebrating the discovery of the Burgess Shale. For the uninitiated, this extraordinary fossil site, discovered in 1909 by Charles D. Walcott, director of the Smithsonian, contains exquisitely preserved soft bodied invertebrate animals, including wiwaxia corrugata. This conference will be attended by students and renowned invertebrate paleontologists. The Burgess Shale is near Field, British Columbia, not far from Banff. If we are fortunate, we may travel to Jaspar as well.
Alice's brother Paul's daughter Tamara is preparing nuptials for September 5 in Glen Ellen, California, known for Jack London's home and more recently Napa wine country. It will be hot, but family reunions have their charm.
We are still pending information on Albuquerque Jim's appearance at reunion in San Mateo this year.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Wiwaxia in the shop

I could see it coming: at 80th and Dayton going east on my way to feldenkreis and yoga, I thought "here's a good situation asking for an accident." Less than a minute later, I was hit from behind in a three car pile up. Wiwaxia is now in Arne's on Greenwood: not as damaged as the Prius squeezed between it and the jeep that hit us. Gravity was part of it. I'm ok. Bad things have happened on my birthday before. Completing any part of my March to do list is affected by my current part time job of dealing with insurance and car rental.