illuminare festival

that was a taster of the shiny illuminares festival i went to on the weekend. it's a homegrown festival of lights (ie. no corporate stuff, just like the drive festival and the march of lost souls at halloween) which is held down at trout lake park, that cute little park i take chicory to sometimes, about twenty minutes walk away.

there were stilt walkers and fire twirlers and people playing the cello, and nearly everyone carried a lantern! there were lantern-making workshops earlier in the week, but i am good girl who does study, so i didn't go, but a mate of mine whipped up some lanterns by herself, so our group had two to share. it was so pretty! some very elaborate lanterns, including a huge dragonfly held up by helium balloons, penguins, a line of underwear hanging between two trees and the floating water lilies you see above. one simple and popular strategy was to put a little sand and a tea light candle in the bottom of lots of paper bags. thus:

there was cool entertainment, like the circus folks hanging from trees, the bclettes, who do bicycle themed dance performances, and a mobile drumming troop. they also had those neat wonky bicycles again, and the MW and i spent half an hour riding round a little arena. i got to try the very tall one, the very very small one, the ones with the long front axle, the banana seat cruisers and the one where you have to pedal backwards to go forwards. it was kickarse.

since saturday night i've had a very exciting trip to the outer suburbs of vancouver (never again), spent two hours packing files away in boxes as an RA, and read lots and lots of books, mostly about lynching, branding, castration, rape, murder and people dying of AIDS. my caribbean paper is starting to bring me down. . .

i've also been reading lots of ivan coyote's work (the spoken word artist i saw late last year), which is amazing and uplifting. he writes about local queer life and about growing up the yukon. he walks his dog at trout lake park too! i'm also reading anne of ingleside . . . i found it perched on a telegraph pole . . . outside a construction site . . . it's one of the later books. . . l.m.montgomery . . . obviously lost interest. . . it's just studded . . . with ellipses. oh, i found a story of hers in the last edition of "the farmers advocate" i read on the microfilm. i've had such an entertaining time with the old manitoban farmer's advocate. oh, my eyeballs are killing me, but the ads are hilarious. "weak men, listen! i can make you strong!" the first ad for a telephone is aug 26, 1908, and it's promoted as a safety device. and i found out what to do if your pet rabbit is sick: get your big brother to hold it still, find an 18" stick and hit it sharply just here, 3" behind the ear. that will alleviate its suffering.

i have one meeting left for each of my courses, which is actually kind of a relief. all i gotta do is write two essays and do my defence and i'm a master! fear me!