August 18, 2006.

Hi.

I decided that I could use a blog to answer the people who say to me, "I never know what you are doing. " Maybe I'll create an entry every month - or whenever there is something to say.

So let me say this now: I am happy, I am reborn this summer!
What does this tell you: I am riding my bike, yahoo!
I went hiking in the Gatineau Hills this week with Jim and Marjory, and I saw a scarlet toadstool and a tiny dark green baby frog. Two, one up close, very close! Up hills, down dales, very soggy dales!

I had surgery again in January, my ninth since that initial horror in '98, and I am doing better than ever! I have a new doctor who was an ER doctor for 20 years and he GETS it! He understands, he KNOWS, he LISTENS, he CARES, he fixes me!

This summer I soared, listening to FOUR National Arts Centre Orchestra concerts, with piano soloists, and blue-tummied Pinchas Zukerman, and impossibly soft transitions...and whispering winds... and ten chamber music concerts, under the spires of melting churches...I saw a zillion Ottawa Fringe plays and LOVED the best of all, CSI with Greg, Jordan and Chelsea - so polished, so smart, so funny, so colourful.

I have visited with so many BOFA people - that's another entry- and I actually "acted" in Duncan's movie! A first, and another entry! I went to Perth to see Tyley sing in the park, mmm, and I have been swimming and gardening all summer. I planted five new roses in the back, and they are glorious. I spent a weekend with my family at a cottage in the Muskokas and laughed at the dogs and swam in clear brown water. I laughed at the puppets in the festival in Almonte,and baked in the sun. I water my flowers for an hour every day. I have started to write.



And I have been taking piano lessons for three years, now that's a passion! I practise EVERY day and I love to practise. (But I am nervous to play for anyone, especially Ben.) And I love Ben too, my gentle, demanding, skilful, bassoon-playing, guitar-playing, creative, patient, knowledgeable and beautiful piano teacher.


Oh, there's so much more, but...

I also thought that a blog would be a way to share my latest concerns or passions.

Here is one- a concern and a passion. It's about cancer.

My grandson was born in '98, with neuroblastoma, cancer. That's an abomination, I think, for a child to be blasted in the womb.

In 1999, Johnson died of cancer, months after he had been diagnosed with it. Many of you participated in the show we held at Canterbury, the Johnson Jamboree, in February. Johnson planned to come see us perform in the Games- and he tried. He died in the early hours of the morning the day we were playing.

Johnson still looms in The Games and the NAC Studio, and his friends ache with loss.

In the summer of 2003, my brother told me his wife had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I tried to help as my brother struggled, turning into a haunted, haggard, sleepless skeleton himself, and my sister-in-law got weaker and weaker; they both hoped always for a miracle.
I held her cold, yellow body one day as the nurse was changing her bed, and then I left for rehearsal. Less than an hour later, she died. She was only 50.

Our beautiful Marjorie, Bofa '92, has just recovered from the fight of her life- beating leukemia.

I am enraged. How about you?

How much more so to realize that we are all absorbing uncontrolled carcinogens without number. In our air, our food, our water - always thinking that we are protected from harm by legislation, by governments, AREN'T WE?
Well, no, we are not. Especially not in Canada.

So I am going to put some information in this blog. Don't use teflon-coated pans. Don't use those dryer sheets to soften clothes. Don't breathe or drink or eat anything that has been warmed in plastic. All plastics are not safe at all. Check out everything, including the sources of articles you read. Just be aware. Be smart.


Check out this: http://www.newstarget.com/002693.html

http://www.newstarget.com/019957.html