Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

 Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

    When the library put out an assortment of novels for the Book Club’s theme “Historical Biographical Fiction” I chose the book Booth.   While I did have an interest in the life of the notorious John Wilkes Booth the assassinator of Abraham Lincoln, I was not entirely enthusiastic about reading a whole book about him.  However, once I began reading, I was overjoyed with Booth because it was not entirely focused on John Wilkes Booth, although he was part of the story.  Instead the novel centered on the whole Booth family.  

            It included his famous father, his long suffering mother, and his brothers and sisters.  The novel followed members of the Booth family with their individual personalities, and the dynamics within the rather dysfunctional family.  

    Junius Booth, a celebrated internationally known Shakespearean actor was the father and breadwinner of the family.  While being a kind and sensitive man while with his family, he was usually absent from them as he toured plays around the country.  He was also a serious alcoholic who drank away large portions of his earnings, leaving his wife and family back home living in near poverty.  

             As was common in the early 1800’s, many children died of disease during their childhood, but those members of the Booth family who survived into adulthood, included the eldest son, June, who as he neared adulthood, followed in his father’s footsteps, left home for California to become an actor.  

            His brother Edwin Booth, was a very shy and sensitive child who didn’t really want to be an actor.  Against his will, he was sent by the family to accompany his touring father, with the task of preventing his father from drinking.  His time watching over his father, did eventually cause Edwin to also become an actor; the best and most successful actor in the family.

    Of the two sisters, Rosalie the oldest, from an early age was designated “Mother’s helper” and spent her life as an unhappy homebody.  Asia, who was a bit younger was more outgoing and determined.  Then came John Wilkes, his mother’s spoiled and favorite son.  He also became an actor, although never as talented or successful as Edwin.       

           John was a hot head, who often caused trouble and later became enthralled with the political beliefs of the South, even to the point of becoming a spy for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  It was interesting to read about the interactions between the different Booth family members, all distinct individuals with different beliefs and loyalties to the United States.  

    The storyline of the Booth family members was documented chronologically, but also documented in the novel’s timeline was what was going on in the life of Abraham Lincoln.  The reader of course, knows what is going to happen with John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln, and the pace of the novel increased the tension as it approached that resolution.

    The novel was a wonderfully interesting view of an American family living in the early and middle 1800’s.  I was especially fascinated by what happened to the family members after the assassination, with the juxtaposition of the both the love of a family member and at the same time, the horror of what John had done, effecting the lives of each family member in a different way for the remainder of their lives.

    I was glad that Karen Joy Fowler the author, decided not to make John Wilkes Booth the center of the novel.  It was so much more interesting to divide the chapters between the different members of the Booth family and show the interaction of their lives.

You can view my paintings at::  davidmarchant2.ca

Elk in a Field of Oats

     Back in the 1970’s and 80’s there were no elk in our valley, but slowly they have established themselves, much to the chagrin of the local farmers.  They cause a lot of problems for the farmers, especially during the winter, when they eat away at the large bales of hay stored outside for cattle. 

    The other day while going through a stack of old snapshots I came upon this interesting photo.  I used to bike into work throughout most of the year, and one time while biking home I noticed the two elk antlers sticking out above this field of oats.  

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Brilliant (?) Teaching Career

         When I was attending university, I couldn’t really decide on what I wanted to do in life.  My mother said, “Why not major in education, you can always get a job as a teacher.”

        Since I couldn’t make up my mind about other majors, that is what I did.  It worked out well for me because it did enable me to immigrate to Canada, where I found a teaching job available up in an isolated lumber mill that no Canadian would take.  I was happy to take the job teaching in the start-up, one-room, school that was so isolated that to get there, you had to fly in.  Above you can see a photo of me and “my school”.

        While many people talk about starting at the bottom and working their way up.  My teaching career took the opposite track.  I started at the top and worked my way down.  In that first teaching job, I was the WHOLE school.  I was the principal, the teacher, the maintenance man, the secretary, and even the “bus” driver (actually it was a pickup truck that I drove down to the shore of Takla Lake to pick up the kids from the Native family that lived down there.) 

        After 3 years of teaching in the isolated lumber mill camp, my wife and I had had enough and sought to get out to live somewhere with access to “civilization”, and I took a teaching job in Avola, BC.  There my position declined somewhat.  I was no longer a principal, but was given the title “Head Teacher” in the two-room school.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs, we hated living in tiny Avola, despite it having TV and radio reception, and a highway that allowed us to actually drive to other places. 

        That long year was more than enough time to spend in Avola, so after the school year was over, I resigned and we moved to McBride, BC.  I didn’t have a teaching job waiting for me there, but we bought a home, and I hoped that a job would materialize.  I put my name on the substitute teacher’s list, and did a lot of subbing, but a full time job never materialized.   I did eventually get a full time job drawing maps for the BC Forest Service.  

        Thus ended my teaching career, from principal to substitute teacher in just 5 years.

        I recently came across the photo below, showing the teaching staff at the McBride Elementary School.  The photo has always been a puzzle to me.  That is me standing in the back row.   I was never part of the teaching staff, I just happened to be called in one day as a substitute teacher and that just happened to be the day the school pictures were taken.  The regular teaching staff insisted that I be in the photo even though I was very reluctant, saying that it didn’t seem right.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Continuing Lyuba Milne's Studio Tour

     In Lyuba’s gallery the group was able to see just how extensive and varied Lyuba’s ceramic works have been.  Many of her newer colorful sculptural creations were on display.  Most of those newer works were fired in an electric kiln, but the tour was also shown the large much-used gas kiln that David Milne had built (photo below).  

    Lyuba then turned the guiding of the tour over to David, who explained the excitement of making Raku pottery, where glowing-hot pieces of pottery in a small tiger torch-heated kiln, are precariously moved with a long pair of tongs into a bucket of straw or newspapers.   The very glowing-hot pots cause the straw or paper in the bucket to ignite, then the fire is smothered by a lid on the bucket, which draws oxygen out from the glazes, giving the cooled glaze a metallic look. 

    The Dunster Museum’s “Discovery Visits” which organized the tour of Lyuba’s studio have been very interesting so far, and I am certainly eager to see where they take us next.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Lyuba Milne's Ceramic Studio

     Yesterday we took advantage of the second of the Dunster Museum’s “Discovery Visits”.  The event is set up so that Robson Valley residents can see some of the really creative things their neighbors are privately doing.  The first of the visits dealt with the exotic succulent plants David Milne was propagating,  Yesterday’s event was also at Milne’s but its focus was on the amazing sculptural ceramics that Lyuba Milne has been making in her studio.

    Lyuba doesn’t use a potter’s wheel, instead all of her work is hand built, using either slabs of clay or coils.  Her experimenting with clay has led to an extremely wide variety of shapes and textures in her creations.  In the photo above Lyuba introduces, explains, and gives an overview of her ceramic endeavors.  

    The picture below was taken in the glazing area of her studio where Lyuba is explaining the hundreds of glazes made by David Milne and the multitude of experimental sample firings are needed before she decides on which glaze to use on her pieces.  The photo at the very bottom shows just one set of the hundreds of glaze samples that have been test-fired in the kiln.

    Ceramics is such a complex and unforgiving art form.  What clay to use?  How should I construct it so it won’t collapse or crack during the firing?  What temperature should be used in the kiln so that the glaze turns out the way I expect it to?  After all of those considerations, the piece can still fall apart or not turn out properly.  

    It takes a huge amount of thought, time, patience, and luck for Lyuba’s creations to turn out as spectacular and beautiful as they are.  I will have some more shots from our visit to Lyuba’s ceramic studio on tomorrow’s blog.

    You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Oh, Its a Fawn

     This is something that happened in May of 1993.  At the time my herd of Angora goats numbered about 15.  They spent their days confined in the barnyard when I was away at work.  After I biked home from work, I used to walk the goats down to the pasture on the other side of the house, where they could find fresh grass to eat.  After I herded them down there, I would just hang around to keep them out of mischief.  As they grazed, I didn’t really have anything to do, but it was a relaxing way to clear my mind after being in the office at work all day. 

         One day I herded the goats over to a patch of tall grass along the fence.  As I stood there with nothing to do, I happened to glance down and noticed something brown with some white, hidden in the tall grass.  At first I thought that it was a big grouse, (a chicken-like bird with brown and white coloring) hiding under the weeds, but then I carefully parted the grass and discovered it was a fawn.  

It lay still, completely inert, and I wondered if it was dead, so I bent down and touched it with my finger to see if it was alive.  Its skin twitched, so I knew it was okay.  I went up to the house to get my wife, so she could see it.  As we watched it, the mother deer appeared, slowly walking across the lower end of the pasture.   I think it was trying to distract our attention away from the fawn. 

        Not wanting to cause the mother deer any grief, I herded the goats back up to the barn, leaving the fawn hiding in the tall grass.  From the house we kept watch and eventually the mother deer returned to the fawn and led it away.

         What a treat.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Day of Harvesting

     I spent most of yesterday picking the crops that are ready to harvest.  Most crops come in all at once, and there is no way we can eat all of it before it spoils, so we preserve what we can by freezing or drying, so we can eat it throughout the year.  

    I started my chores yesterday by picking the raspberries.  There was a bumper crop this year and the branches were weighted down by all of the berries on them.  There is no way we can even pick all of the berries, let alone eat them.  The small bucketful I picked yesterday, we froze.

    After picking the raspberries I moved on to the garden, where I did the second picking of our peas.   As I expected, Kona joined me in the endeavor, although all of the pea pods she tore off of the vines never made it into my bucket, she ate them.  Picking the pods is only the first part of the job.  Once I get the pods picked, I have to spend a couple of hours de-podding the peas, which I usually do as I watch TV.

    The last bit of harvesting I did yesterday was the oregano.  I using scissors, I cut the leaved stems off of the plant, then put them in our food dryer.  After a few days in the dryer, the leaves are easily stripped from the stems and fragmented into small flakes.  We always use the oregano on the pizza we make every Friday night.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Memorable Photos: Four Waxwings in a Row

         In 1996, I had a herd of angora goats and a lot of very poor fences, so I couldn’t really let the goats out to roam freely around in the pasture.  What I ended up doing was to play shepherd and herd my goats every day after I got home from work.  It was something I came to enjoy, because it gave me time to unwind after a day at the office.

        I would herd the goats down to the pasture behind my pond and let them stuff themselves with whatever vegetation they desired.  I would just stand around with my whip, which I would snap if some goat was acting up.     

        One afternoon as I was standing beside a grove of alder trees, I happened to glance over and spotted a nest packed to the brim with four fledgling cedar waxwings.  They were getting so big, that they were taking up all the space in the under-sized nest.  I realized that they would probably be leaving the nest very soon.  Always eager to take an interesting photo, I cemented in the back of my mind, the idea of returning with my camera to take a photo.

        Unfortunately, I totally forgot about the crowded nest of waxwings until a few days later.  When I did finally remember, I immediately grabbed my camera and headed down to the alder trees.  When I got close to where I had seen the nest, I quietly removed the regular lens from the camera and attached the telephoto lens, so I wouldn’t have to get really close to the young birds in the nest.

        With the camera ready, I crouched low and slowly and quietly crept up to where the nest was perched.  When I got to where I figured I was close enough for the shot, I quickly stood up, swung my camera into place in front of my eye, ready to snap the picture, but what I saw through my viewfinder was an empty nest.  The waxwings had already left.  

        “Damn,” I thought, “I waited too long, and missed the shot.”

        Full of frustration and disappointment, I stepped back from the tree.  At that point my eyes happened to rise up above the nest and there on a branch, I saw the four young waxwings, all standing rigidly straight and perfectly still like soldiers at attention.  They were all in a line trying to blend in to the scenery, hoping not be noticed. 

        I aimed my camera and got, not the shot I had originally came for, but one that was much more interesting.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1994: Wood Ducks, Then More and More Wood Ducks

         I had my pond dug in the fall of 1993.  The main reason for doing it was to create some wildlife habitat.  The pond filled with water over the winter and by the following spring, I was starting to see that Nature was beginning to take advantage of the new environment I had created for them.  The biggest surprise I got in 1994 was the arrival of wood ducks, a species I had never seen before in the Valley.  That spring they had discovered the oats that my goats had dropped in the bedding of the barn that I had spread along the pond’s dam, to encourage grass growth, and were happy to eat the grain. 

    That spring the number of wood ducks on my newly created pond slowly increased as they migrated into the Valley, but the most I saw were ten.   Then over the summer they disappeared, flying off to nest.  As autumn slowly began, I got a real surprise:

    We got back home from our prairie vacation on August 21st.  There were two wood duck on the pond, which was a pleasant surprise, because there had been no wood ducks on the pond since spring.  The hummingbirds had  disappeared, traveling south on their migration, and the days had gotten noticeably shorter, at 9:00 in the evening it was dark, which prompted me to record in my diary:  “Summer is already losing its grip.”  When we woke up two days later, there was fresh snow on the mountains.

    As the days passed, I started to notice that wood ducks, who had been absent from the pond over the summer, had started to arrive in increasing numbers.  One morning there were 7, that evening there was 9.  On August 25th I counted 13.  I assumed that many of those I was seeing were the mother ducks with their adolescent ducklings.  The wood ducks were no longer sporting their colorful plumage and were brownish in color.  I expected that the males had lost their distinctive coloration because the breeding season was over.

    On the morning of August 26th, I didn’t see any wood ducks, and figured that maybe I should put some more grain on the dam for them to eat.  I filled an old coffee can with oats and walked it down to the pond.

     SWOOSH, a flock of wood ducks I hadn’t seen, flew up from the other side of the pond.  I tried to count them as they flew off and got to roughly twenty-three.  I counted the same number of wood ducks again that evening.

    Diary, August 30th:   “ This is crazy, there were 30 wood ducks this morning.  I counted 26 this evening, but it was getting dark.”  

        As days passed, I continued to count 30 wood ducks regularly, even into the first week of September, when I counted 34.  On September 9th I had an amazing 39 wood ducks on the pond, but surprisingly, that number was surpassed two days later when I counted 42 of them.  After that, the flock of wood ducks started to slowly decline, as they began to migrate out of the Valley.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Volunteer Poppies in the Garden

     I have blogged before about all of the “volunteers” (plants that sprout from seeds left from previous years) that come up in the garden.  When I weed the garden, I can distinguish between “weeds” and the tiny emerging poppy plant volunteers.  I usually leave the poppies to continue to grow.  As they grow they do make the garden look fairly chaotic and disorganized, but once they begin to bloom, they reward me by adding a lot of beautiful and colorful accents of red and lavender, spread throughout the garden.

    Below are some closeup photos of the poppies.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Protective Fence Around Our Garden

     We have a fence around our garden.  I built it to prevent the deer from eating the produce that we grow.  One time before I built the fence, the local paper came out and there on the front page was a black and white photograph of our garden showing a pair of deer standing there, munching away and having a feast of our vegetables.  I have even done a painting called “Damn Deer” showing what was left of a cabbage that the deer had eaten.

 

   While I always think of the fence keeping the deer out, I recently realized that it keeps other vegetable  stealing predators out also.

    A week ago I went into the garden to do some weeding.  I left the gate open as I got busy pulling up the biomass of weeds that were growing among our veggies.  I wasn’t paying much attention to anything else, so I hadn’t noticed that Kona had also come into the garden.  

    When my bucket was full of weeds, I got up to take them over to dump in the compost pile, and that’s when I saw Kona.

    She was busily helping herself to the peas.  She was laying on the ground on top of some of the pea plants she had torn down, busily crunching away at the tasty pea pods she had ripped from the plants.  We have never had a dog that loved vegetables so much.  

    Luckily, we have a bumper crop of peas this year, so I can be generous to Kona.  A couple of days ago I picked a bucket and a half of peas, and there will be several more pickings to go before the crop is over.   As I was out there picking the peas, Kona sat patiently nearby with her sad eyes on me, silently begging.  Since she was acting so well-behaved, I periodically threw her some pea pods to crunch on, rewarding her for patiently waiting, rather than just helping herself to the peas.

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

1994: The "Scotty" Tyranosaurus Dig

  The next day we drove the 12 kms to Eastend, Saskatchewan.   After checking out the camping possibilities at the regional park, we drove out to White Mud Pits to do some fossil hunting.  We spent the morning searching high and low, climbing up the slopes and down, without much success.  I did find a fragment of turtle shell.

Back in Eastend, a charming small town prairie town of around 600 people, we visited their  surprisingly interesting small museum, then set up our tent back at the Regional park.  After lunch we waited around for 2:30, when we would begin our T-Rex Tour.  The tour cost us $20 each.

The site of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton was located on rather barren-looking looking ranch land, and we watched the small group of paleontologists busily digging at the upper edge of a coulee.  The initial discovery of the T-Rex bones happened in 1991, by the local school principal who happened to be  with a group of paleontologists to learn about how to find and identify fossils.  Luckily, he was the one that found a Tyrannosaurus tooth, which then led to the rest of the fossilized skeleton of “Scotty”.

When it was determined to be a fairly complete skeleton; a very rare find, the excavation began in earnest in 1994, just months before we arrived.  The paleontologists expected to have the whole T-Rex skeleton removed by mid-September, a month after our visit, but it was slow going, having to remove the fossils which were embedded in rock, painstakingly, by hand.  It would take twenty years for all the bones to be removed, cleaned, and then re-assembled into a standing display.

They named the Tyrannosaurus “Scotty”, after the bottle of scotch they imbibed to celebrate its discovery.  Scotty is still a famous T-Rex.  It is the largest Tyrannosaurus ever discovered, and in 2025, paleontologists made another discovery from its bones.  They found blood vessels in one of its ribs that had been broken before its death.  The blood vessels were there to help the rib heal.  It was the first discovery of the blood vessels in a dinosaur.  Soft tissue is rarely fossilized. 

        The little town of Eastend, Saskatchewan has used the discovery of Scotty as the main centerpiece in the construction of a museum called the T.rex Discovery Centre, which opened in 2003.

1994: Grassland National Park

          The next morning we took down our tent and packed our supplies into the car in the fog that was engulfing Cypress Hills, and headed toward Saskatchewan.  We stopped in at the Tourist Information Centre and after our enquiries they reminded us to make sure we call ahead and make  reservations for the T-Rex Tour which we had planned to be our next stop.  When we made the call we discovered that we could only get onto the tour two days later, so we changed our plans and headed to Val Marie, Saskatchewan to check out the newly established Grassland National Park.  

            Grassland National Park was set up to preserve some of the last remaining flora and fauna of the prairies, most of which had disappeared because of all of agriculture that had taken over.   At the park headquarters things seemed rather confused, but finally we were able to get some information.

    We ended up camping in a rather barren looking campground in Val Marie, since there weren’t any campgrounds in Grassland Park.  Once we had the tent up we took a nap during the hot afternoon.  At 6:00, we drove into Grassland National Park.  It is in the evening that most of the animals come out.

    The flat prairie landscape and huge sky were beautiful, and indeed the animal did come out, but first we saw the ring of rocks that were remnants of an old Indian teepee circle.  We discovered some Black-tailed Prairie Dog towns, and a burrowing owl.  In the distance there were some Prong-horned antelope and White-tailed deer grazing.  We also spotted a Meadow Lark and lots of hawks.  

    We came upon a painter and his wife who let us look at a burrowing owl through their spotting scope.

    It was foggy and cool the next morning when we emerged from our tent.  We broke camp and began our drive through Grasslands.  The prairie dogs were our most interesting thing to see, although watching two coyotes and two antelopes through the heat waves, gave us a sense of Africa, which was neat to experience.  

    We decided to take a hiking trail that overlooked the valley, and came upon another teepee ring.  A couple that had also camped in the same campground told us that there had been two Great Horned Owls perched over our tent early that morning.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Latest Painting: Mountain View

     I painted the last square of this picture today.  I started it in December.  The painting took me 150 hours to complete.  I used acrylics on an 24” x 36” canvas. 

    The painting is the view we see from the Mennonite hill every time we drive to town.  In the winter our road is covered with packed snow and the Fraser River is frozen.   The mountains on the south side of the Valley are part of the Cariboo Range.  

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca