Currently viewing the category: "Westview"

This little light of mine

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13 watt, 27 lumen compact fluores­cent bulb

A couple of weeks ago one of the ceiling lights in the hallway began to flicker. I found the step stool, removed the shade. Inside was an unfamil­iar shaped fluores­cent tube which I now know is a dual-tube 13-watt, 27 lumen compact fluores­cent (CF) model.  The brand was unknown to me and I thought, oh-oh, this will be impos­si­ble to replace, which was unfor­tu­nate because I realized we had at least ten other ceiling fixtures with these same odd little bulbs, includ­ing one in our walk-in closet that hums every time we turn it on.  Despite my belief that I was on a futile quest, I drove over to Rona Build­ing Supply and to my surprise, there were several of these little bulbs on the shelf.  Some were the right wattage but too long; others the right length but the wrong wattage. I selected two lower wattage bulbs @ $10 each and brought them home.  Up on the step stool, I tried without success to insert the bulb into the fixture; no matter how hard I forced, the bulb refused to seat properly.  Meanwhile, a second bulb in the hallway began to flicker.

I called the store. Grant, the helpful light­ing associate, retrieved my old bulb from his waste­bas­ket and said he could order me the correct one. It would be a differ­ent brand, but should would work fine. Great, Grant, go ahead and while you’re at it, order nine of them.

A week later I called the store.  Another associate looked up my order.  No one called you? he asked.  No, I told him. Well, they’re here.  Come and get them.  I drove to the store, asked for my order.  The cashier couldn’t locate them, then called Grant, who also looked and couldn’t find them. He apolo­gized and said his fellow associate shouldn’t have relied on the computer before he told me to come down. I left without my bulbs.

By the time  I arrived home, Rona had called and told me the bulbs were there after all,  in Receiv­ing.  I drove back to the store.  A differ­ent cashier got my bulbs.  They were the wrong ones. Grant came and we spent the next fifteen minutes looking at minia­ture images of compact fluores­cent units in supplier catalogs.  Again many were the right wattage but the base seemed was wrong.  Tell you what, said Grant, take one of these home, try it and if the base fits, I can order you the proper length.

Back home, I climbed the stool once more. The bulb fit into the fixture but was over an inch too long for the shade.  I called Grant.  We’re in business.  All-righty, I’ve got 34 in Calgary, I’ll get your order in right away and call you when they arrive.  Indeed, a couple of days later, nine bulbs of the correct length with the proper ends arrived. I replaced the two in the hallway and while I was at it, went after the hummer in the closet.  To no avail.  Even with a new bulb, the fixture hums.

I just took a look at the dining room fixture.  That sucker has weird-shaped bulbs too.  Last night I went to turn on the lamp by my desk. It crack­led and burnt out.  Damn, it’s a forty-watt bulb and we don’t have any of those.

An Evening of Stories

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On a chilly evening with snow in the forecast, a commu­nity of strangers gather to listen to others recount stories.  People seat themselves, the lights dim and a blind man strums his guitar and sings about remain­ing youth­ful, keeping your eyes open, maintain­ing a strong founda­tion.  He sings of staying joyful, offer­ing wisdom to young and old alike.

The woman who follows him speaks mostly of her husband’s peculiar behav­ior, about the life together, about the strange and terri­ble things he brings home and leaves in her kitchen and around the house.  She tells of days living in South America, about snakes in burlaps sacks, about armed police­men, guinea pigs, terrar­i­ums, alliga­tors and accep­tance. Her husband is a biolo­gist. She loves him.

A Coastal Salish carver from a nearby commu­nity stands with a carved and painted paddle — a gift from another man, who told him it must be used and not hung on a wall as decora­tion.  he spoke of the paddle as an instru­ment of life and death and how visitors landing on the shores of his commu­nity who had lost or broken their own paddles, would never be refused the gift of a paddle — an instru­ment of life and death.  He told of his grandfather’s repeated three-day treks up the mountain to find a yellow cedar tree from which he would cut a plank, using an axe, a long string of cedar root, rocks for weight, and a log. And how his grand­fa­ther over several months would extract the plank from the living side of that tree, knowing that he would wound, but not kill that tree; knowing that the bark would grow back around the wound, over time, and heal the tree.

The man with the paddle also told tales of the Creator, over trans­for­ma­tion, of snipes, and deer, and bragging, and wolves in disguises, and how the Creator could dispense justice and equana­mity. “Careful what you say,” he told us, “you might be talking to the Creator.”

Time had come for a break. We all left the hall, and ate snacks and sipped refresh­ments.  Many of the people chatted with old friends, a few stood and watched the others, wrapped up in their own thoughts, but all anxious to return and listen to more tales. Soon the lights dimmed and every­one returned to their seats.

The last woman to tell stories walked slowly to her chair, took off her heavy coat and hung it on the back. She sat down and picked up the telephone beside her.  “Hello Dad?” She spoke softly and told her father many things.  About how funny, and stupid, and awkward his funeral had been, about the priest who could barely speak, about her aunt’s handwrit­ten and mispelt eulogy, about her own giggle tribute to her father, about a relative in white pants who was there, about the sadness his death had left in others, about how many people came, and from how far away, and how much he would have enjoyed it.

The woman inhab­ited her charac­ter fully, able to bring all of us on her emotional journey.  When tears fell and her voice filled with sadness, we believed her portrayal of a young woman griev­ing for her father. Her story was less of a story than a conver­sa­tion we were allowed to overhead one side of, but we knew her dead father was on the line, listen­ing along with us. As she contin­ued, the woman told her father about what had happened to her since his death, of her travels across the conti­nent and across the ocean and back.  Only then did the realiza­tion come, that his was not an act, that this griev­ing young charac­ter was not a charac­ter at all, that this woman had only recently lost her father and what we were witness­ing was her true grief and accep­tance of her loss.

The woman told her father she wanted to play him a song she had written, then held a music player up to the phone for him to hear — her soaring voice and music, a tribute to her dead father.  After­ward she spoke about when her father and her had met the blind singer in another place up the coast, then she invited him to come up play a song for her father, which he did.  As he sang and played his guitar, the woman walked through the crowd and handed nearly every­one a pine cone from a basket.  When the song was over, the woman was overcome with emotion and the two stood and sat crying, joined by many others in the room.  The woman invited every­one to come forward and stand in a circle, and most every­one did, and a few spoke of knowing the woman’s father, includ­ing the carver from the nearby commu­nity who recalled how last year, the man had come to his commu­nity and shown him ways of sharp­en­ing and keeping his tools that saves him many hours of work.

A Life in Westview

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The first thing you see is the ocean, not endless but reach­ing fully north­wards and south­wards across your view, inter­rupted by a low undulat­ing misty wall of trees. In the far distance, beyond the narrow point that marks the island’s end, the grey waters stretch to the shores of another bigger landfall — an even mistier coast­line whose forested hillsides and glacier-white peaks are obscured in cloud and fog.   If you didn’t know this gigan­tic island and coastal mountains were there, you could easily mistake the grey horizon as the edge of the world. There are more islands to the north, includ­ing the closest one, aboriginal-owed and uninhab­ited, and another, a cliff-strewn one further up the strait with nearly pure-white sand, and beyond that count­less others. Much of the time they exist only in memory or in fleet­ing glimpses when the rain-laden clouds lift. Because these are the waters of an inside passage, seldom does the ocean offer up huge crash­ing break­ers, except on stormy days like this, when the wind whip the surface into deep rollers and white­caps spread across the entire surface of the strait. Even without binoc­u­lars, white foam and spray explodes off the rocky shore­lines of the islands. If this were another coast, one would describe or speak of angry or restless seas, but here along the west coast of the Pacific, somehow these term seems too fierce for this temper­ate climate.  That is not to say there is no danger on and around these waters.  Many vessels have been lost or wrecked in the strong currents and many people have disap­peared in the dark waters.  But we are safe on land here in Westview.  We sit indoors and watch the storms from the warmth and comfort of the old house on the hill with the large windows and the blue fence.

In Novem­ber in Westview, the winds often howl and drive sheets of rain up the coast and through the town. Wind chimes dance and clank all-night long, the old house groans and the chimney and stove vent thrum and knock. Rain hammers the windows and the metal roof, and the branches of the grand old tree across the road bend and thrash about, but don’t break. On the grass under­neath, last summer’s fallen leaves swirl and tumble. Hydro and telephone wires sway and bounce along and across the roadway between the wooden poles that mark the way from the water’s edge up the hill and past the old house.  Gulls and raven strug­gle to make headway along the same route, then turn and wheel upwards and sideways in what could be either celebra­tion or surren­der back toward the water.

The small ferry has chosen a less direct course than normal, heading upwind across the strait, then swing­ing downwind to allow the south easter­lies to push it toward the dock.  The larger ferry from the big island is far behind sched­ule as it lumbers across the wider and more danger­ous open waters from the far shore.  The tugboat that glided past earlier in the day hauling the barges laden with wood chips and hog fuel to the mill, now strug­gles against  the power­ful headwind.  The steel towline is stretched taut as the empty barges, despite riding higher in the water, dip and buck as their straight-sided fronts dig into the oncom­ing waves, throw­ing walls of water high above them.