Monica and the Flower Thief

I was reading the front page of one of our local rags, when I was reminded of a time a few years ago when my eldest sister Monica impressed me once again.

The newspaper article was illustrated with a photo of a pregnant woman smiling in front of a few of the potted plants she has placed around her community of Yarrow's downtown.  "After two summers, the mother of two (soon to be three) estimates she has spent almost $2000 on plants, soil, pots, rocks and other materials to get some much-needed greenery into the town's three block downtown core," stated the article.  "(Her) efforts began as her own pet project, but community members have jumped on board, watering and caring for the plants placed in pots outside their businesses."  A week ago, four containers disappeared, and on the weekend, sixteen more were stolen. 

I'm not surprised.  Apparently some green thumbs are accompanied by a set of light fingers.  Yes, I know  gardening is big business and that plants and their containers can be quite expensive, especially if one wants to achieve that instant full garden look, but stealing other people's plants already carefully and lovingly potted, or plants from public spaces meant to be enjoyed by the community overall?  Very low indeed. 

A couple of years ago in April, my sister, Monica came down to stay with me and we attended an arts council conference in a nearby city.  The conference was held at a brand new fine arts high school with lush landscaping.  The weather was lovely so we ate our lunch outside in the courtyard and my sister and I took every chance to get off our chair-worn bottoms and go for walks around the grounds.  After the final day's last session, Monica and I were preparing to leave when we noticed a woman with a black SUV, with the back open, digging up very newly planted bedding plants and placing them in boxes in the back of her vehicle.  Now, I am a bit slow on the uptake and don't generally assume people are doing something they aren't supposed to be doing.  Something about the woman's hurried manner, however, made me pause and say a decided, "hmmmm".  Monica, experienced newspaper reporter and savvy sleuth merely exclaimed, "I think she's stealing those plants!"

After consulting a nearby couple who agreed that, yes, the woman certainly appeared to be helping herself to the plants, my sister began to approach the woman, while calling out "Are you stealing those plants?"  The woman said nothing, but closed her tailgate and drove off in a hurry.  I think it safe to say from her response, that yes, she was in fact a flower thief.

So what kind of person steals bedding plants or potted plants?  What kind of mindset thinks it okay to take beauty and colour from a public place and transplant it for their own enjoyment only?  Did the woman in the SUV think that because a microscopic portion of her tax dollars went to funding the high school's bedding plants, that they were somehow hers to take?  I mean, I know a few people who will take a small snip off a shrub in the park and then propogate it at home to plant in their gardens, but they would draw the line at helping themselves to the entire rosebush, roots and all.  I suppose it is the same mindset as the person who steals the bathrobe or towels from the hotel, or the person who helps herself to office supplies and toilet paper from the supply closet at work, and takes them home.  When many of us were children caught with an unpaid for pack of gum from the corner store, we were marched back to shopkeeper, made to apologize, and pay for the stolen goods (in more ways than one), but we are meant to learn from that experience and grow up to respect the property of others.  That must be it, then.  Perhaps the woman in the SUV stealing bedding plants, and the people who stole the 20 potted plants from downtown Yarrow never were marched down to the corner store to face the music, or maybe they have forgotten what it's like to be caught, accused, tried, and punished for their crimes.  Hopefully, my sister's bravery awakened the woman in the SUV just a little to the fact that, even if she is okay with taking what is not rightfully hers, that others certainly are not.

The photo above is from an article from www.vosizneias.com entitled, "Flower Thieves Terrorize NYC Neighborhood."  The article suggests weighing down potted plants to make them heavier to lift and anchoring baby trees and shrubs to make them harder to steal.  As one of the commenters on this website said in response to these suggestions, "Oy!  What is the world coming to?"

Happy Birthday Galen Paul!

Youth Symphony Concertmaster Galen

Sixteen years ago today, I was lying in a recovery room in the Kootenay Lake District Hospital with my second son swaddled close to me in a receiving blanket, waiting for his dad to arrive.  At that time we were living in Cranbrook, but had been staying at Blue Lake children's camp way up a mountain road for the last few months with my husband, who was the camp's director.  As my due date grew nearer, I found myself concerned about being so far from the Cranbrook hospital, but neither did I want to be alone with my eldest son, Ian, only fifteen months old himself, when I went into labour. 

As it happened, my eldest sister Monica invited Ian and I for a two week stay with her in Nelson at the beginning of August.  I readily accepted, and although my baby was not due until the 24th of August, I secretly hoped to have him in Nelson in the hospital where I was born and surrounded by family.  I got my wish, and went into labour early in the morning of the 10th. I called my husband on his radio phone after breakfast to give him the news.

"You're in labour?  Really?  Are you sure?"  he asked.

"Yes, of course I'm sure.  I wouldn't call if it weren't happening."

"Okay.  I've got to get things organized before I can leave camp for a few days.  When do you think the baby will be born?,"

"How would I know a thing like that?" I laughed.

"Okay, okay.  I'll come as soon as I can.  Sh**."

"Don't worry, Monica is here for me.  Just get here when you can."

 My sister, a mother of four by that time, took me to the hospital emergency room and coached me through an extremely quick delivery.  My tiny blonde baby boy was six pounds, two ounces, with fine features.  "Keep him close to you," said the nurse, the mother of someone I went to high school with.  "He's a little cold."   

My husband arrived sometime in the afternoon and held his son.  "What should we name him?"

We took a while to decide.  Everyone at my sister's house wanted us to name the baby Jeremy.  My husband and I decided on two names to choose between:  Caleb Matthew or Galen Paul.  We chose Galen Paul. Perhaps we should have chosen Caleb Matthew - we failed to realize the name Galen might be shortened to 'Gay' years later by his persistent classmates, which it was. 

Galen remained tiny in stature, but plump in cheek, and I could carry him through the cold winter in a front carrier under one of my husband's coats.  By this time we had moved, with the help of my sister Clare to Kimberly, a little ski town that we had found ourselves escaping to at every opportunity when living in Cranbrook.  My husband had use of a company vehicle and the commute was an easy twenty minutes to work.  For a year and a half, the four of us lived in a small, but sweet rented house, in a beautiful little town with quaint shops and delicious cafes. The boys and I frequented the German bakery where we bought honey whole wheat donuts and deliously chewy fresh pretzels, and we (I) worked off the calories by walking down the long hill to the park and then back again, pushing a double stroller or pulling a sled, depending on the weather.  My husband could drive to the ski hill in five minutes and cross country ski by lamplight in the evenings.  He bought me a pair of skis, too and I found a pair of boots at the second hand store.  I was looking forward to the next winter when I could begin.  My husband was promoted at work, and we started looking at properties to buy.  We could almost afford one there.

Then he was transferred.  To Vancouver Island. 

The boys and I began to pack up the house and say our goodbyes to Kimberly.  We said goodbye to the Rocky mountains in the distance and to the hills closer to home.  We said goodbye to the shops and cafes, to the bakery and the park down the hill.  We also said goodbye to our many new friends. We didn't want to leave, but we had to follow the work where it was to take us.  And we were an adventurous young family at the time, restless for new experiences.

Galen loved the Island.  He loved the ocean, and on one of our first excursions on an absurdly warm day in January, he walked right into the water in his rain suit and rubber boots.  He loved watching the workings of the lumber mill across the Puntledge River where we walked almost daily, and scanning the water for seals, but the non profit organization my husband worked for lost their funding and closed the Island office.  We moved again to a lodge northwest of where we had been living, and stayed for five years.  It was the perfect setting for my growing boys, who by then had a little sister. Galen loved climbing:  trees - the higher the better, walls, the fish netting strung around the volleyball court that kept the ball from landing in the lake, and mountains.  When Galen was about seven years old he heard his friend Neil play the violin, and he decided he wanted to play the violin, too.  He began to take lessons with the gifted fourteen year old son of a local teacher, while he waited for a spot on her long list of students.

Then his dad got a new job on the mainland and we had to move again.  "When can I take violin lessons again? " asked Galen after several months in our new home. Galen is now on his fourth violin teacher and is down at the church, as I write this, practising a Hadyn song with a cellist and a pianist to play at a wedding this weekend.  He has not found all the transitions in his life easy - he is much like his mother in that way.  Looking at him now, tall, handsome and quite distinguished in his glasses, with a ready sense of humour and an equally ready disdain for foolishness, he is, for all intents and purposes a philosopher.  Life has given him cause to complain, but it has also given him so many gifts and talents on which to focus.  And I am very proud of him.

Little Bugs and Little Women

After a few days of recovering from our recent nine day road trip, I decided it was high time I made a fresh blueberry pie - a family favourite. I opened the second drawer of my trusty kitchen island, the drawer where I keep all the baking supplies like baking powder, salt, sugar, etc, only to discover that the drawer had been invaded, conquered and colonized by teeny tiny grain weevils - billions of them. Not only were they happily munching away and breeding in all the various bags of things I had neglected to transfer to sealed containers, they were crawling all over the plastic storage containers in the drawer below, and making their way into the other drawers full of non food items. Blech!

Fortunately, earlier this year I had overhauled the pantry and put everything in sealed containers due to an invasion of silver moths in there, and the weevils had not yet expanded their territory beyond the kitchen island. Still, their presence in my kitchen at all was enough of a 'casus belli '* - (an event or act used to justify a war) on my kitchen. I can handle an untidy house. With six people and all their stuff, I have to. What I cannot abide is insects in my food. That kind of thing sends me straight up the wall. For the past week I was treading a fine line between a 'this too shall pass' attitude and a homicidal obsession with cleaning my cupboards. While well aware of the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless and grieving in Pakistan after the terrible flooding there washed away their homes and killed fifteen hundred of their countrymen, and closer to home, the four hundred forest fires currently burning in British Columbia causing a Los Angeles-like haze to settle over the southern half of my province, it was all I could do to keep my little problem in perspective. By yesterday afternoon, however, my kitchen island was bleached beyond belief, placed in the garage on suspension (I was still seeing a few bugs which had escaped my manic scrubbing by hiding in the crevices, and though the local expert told me the weevils could not live more than two days without a food source, I couldn't stand the idea of any, even dying ones, in the kitchen) and replaced by a large table, and my kitchen was cleaner than I'm sure it has been in years, the only evidence of the war between woman and wee tiny beastie so recently waged. I could have sent a victory flag - one with a picture of a half-crazed woman brandishing a can of Raid in her rubber-gloved hand - up the flagpole.

Needless to say, I was ready for some diversion last night by way of celebration and was glad my friend and I had made plans to take our youngest girls to see Little Women: the Musical, put on by a brand new theatre company in our nearby city. I have read the book and seen the excellent movie with Winona Ryder as Jo March, but never the musical. I would say it was a pretty ambitious production for a young theatre to start its career with, and I don't wish to criticize any of the people who worked so hard to put on this musical, because overall they did a very good job. BUT. I don't know what the set designer was thinking. Granted, this particular stage can be a difficult one for a set designer - the theatre was specifically designed for Shakespeare plays and has a round stage with seats on both sides, so this limitation in size makes it difficult to change sets. An attic plays an important role in Little Women, but I am sure there was a way to design an attic less alarmingly dangerous than the one we cringed at last night. It was so high off the ground with three little levels and only one wimpy looking railing only at the top, and a lot of action was played out on that precarious platform by characters in long Civil War era dresses. A few wardrobe malfunctions occured as dresses, designed too long for such a set full of ladders and steep stairways, were tripped on. At one point, the main character, Jo, played and sung superbly by a young local actress, almost lost her skirt entirely!

There was no denying the talent of the actors who play the four March sisters. They certainly could all sing very well, and act well, too, making the long production of three and a half hours quite tolerable. Everyone cried when Beth dies, and everyone laughed when aspiring writer Jo acts out her 'blud and guts' stories for the family. It was the opening night of the first production of a brand new theatre company after all. I'm sure they'll work out the bugs for the next performance - if only they would put that dangerous attic platform away and replace it with something much less distracting for the poor audience!

*thanks to Paul from 365 Word Quest for this great word

The Intersection

The first day of our visit to the little town north of Edmonton, Alberta where my husband's sister and mother live, it rained. The day before, as we drove from our first stop in the sunny north Okanagan, through the neck-craning mountainscape of the Selkirks and the Rockies, we had driven toward the clouds. By the time we reached the rolling canola fields of Alberta the water was spraying up from the wheels of the trucks in front of us and with the fine, misty showers descending on us from above our visibility was almost nil. The rain subsided about an hour west of Edmonton and my husband was able then to concentrate on pointing out every landmark to do with the excavation of oil, the massive bison farm, and to remark at the speed of the infamous Alberta drivers passing us at regular intervals.



We arrived later than planned at my sister-in-law's house, but found my mother-in-law, sister-in-law (to be called Auntie from now on) and her two elderly, lovingly groomed dogs, Duchess the dalmatian and Casey the border collie/German shepherd eagerly awaiting our arrival. Our brother-in-law had gone to bed - he had to get up early to open the Harley Davidson motorcycle shop where he works. After a short visit we too, exhausted from the thirteen and a half hour drive that day, fell into our beds and slept hard until the eager dogs woke us all up in the morning. Auntie had taken a few days off from her administrative job in the oil industry in honour of our visit and had now assumed the role of super chef and uber-hostess. Bacon, eggs, and toast were placed before us, with juice and coffee to wash it down. "What do you guys want to do today?" she asked me.



Yes, what to do in Central Alberta on a rainy day... We would have the morning to catch up (I hadn't seen my sister-in-law in years) and play with the dogs and then Gramma would be arriving at noon to visit with us..."Why don't we take the kids to the West Edmonton Mall," I suggested. Eager to please, I knew that idea would go over well with everyone and so we agreed to leave after lunch and return in time for my mother-in-law (Gramma) to go to work for her evening shift as cleaner of the local bank.



The West Edmonton Mall is the world's second largest all-under-one-roof shopping experience. It used to be the largest until the monster sized Mall of America was built somewhere in Minnesota. The West Edmonton Mall boasts a huge water park, a roller coaster, a pirate ship complete with real leaping dolphins and barking seals, a skating rink, and of course, hundreds of shops on a variety of themes. There is a Bourbon Street wing complete with Cajun restaurants and a Paris, France wing with foreign shops and cafe au lait. People come from all over the world to experience the West Edmonton Mall, some even requiring a tour guide so they don't get lost. It is not exactly my idea of a destination resort, but it is a unique experience (and, I am sure, handy to have in a city as cold in winter as Edmonton). We also happened to be in the neighbourhood with three teenagers. And it was raining.



After lunch we headed off in two vehicles, Auntie leading the way with Gramma in the front and my two daughters in the back seat of her powerful Ford Mustang. The rest of us followed in Heidi the Honda. Roads are straight and wide in Alberta and people drive accordingly. Keeping up to the Mustang was out of the question. It was all we could do to keep it in our sights, often reaching 130 kms an hour to do so. We reached Edmonton in about forty minutes and began the series of starts and stops that make up city driving. At one such intersection, the Mustang was the first of a long line of vehicles to stop at a red light. We were directly behind her with one lane to our right and two to our left. Suddenly we heard a loud screech of tires and a bang to follow. I looked up to see a rusty old pickup truck doing a 180 degree spin in the middle of the intersection. As the truck spun, the loosely piled up load of scrap metal and assorted stuff in the box of the truck went flying like so many frisbees. A couple of rusty wheelbarrows, empty propane tanks, lengths of 2x6 lumber, axe heads, tire irons, and a small cooler filled with nails, screws, nuts and bolts opened and sprayed across the road and under the vehicles directly around us. When the debris stopped flying we rushed to the Mustang to make sure everyone was okay. Miraculously they were, even though most of the debris had ended up under the Mustang and some of it had hit the lower portion of the car, causing a few minor dents and scratches. As it happened a young man stopped just to our left, after checking on the driver of the old pickup and calling 911, told us he was a Ford mechanic. He checked out the Mustang and said it was mechanically uninjured. The fire department soon arrived and began to redirect the incredibly impatient traffic, interview witnesses, attend to the injured and clean up the mess. The cause of the accident lurked ashamedly on the edge of the accident scene. He, and his large, shiny black truck had run the red light in a moment of inattention. The elderly man in the aged brown pickup full of scrap had seen the black truck coming at his door, accelerated and was hit on the driver's side of the box instead. The impact had sent his truck spinning and presumably his head into whiplash, not to mention the poor old dog of a passenger, a blue-heeler cross with cataracts.

Two policewomen arrived after the fire department and began to hand out paperwork to the victims and the witnesses. We would all be stuck there until the road was cleared and the paperwork completed, so we began to help clean up the mess. Several juice bottles and soda cans had also littered the road and at one point Auntie said to me, 'Look!' A rough looking opportunist had jumped into the scene and was quickly picking up all the drink containers that were refundable for a deposit. He was gone in a flash. At least someone would benefit from the wreckage.

Gramma, in typical fashion, was busy talking and sympathizing with everyone involved - the firemen and policewomen, the guilty party in the black truck, the nice young Ford Mechanic - but she concentrated her concern on the elderly man and his dog who had been hit. She found out the man was seventy-two (though he looked much older), in shock, and that his dog was a biter. Gramma is an animal lover so she tried to talk to the dog, but it was obviously going to guard the truck of its injured master with its life. After the injured man was placed on a stretcher and taken off to hospital, the firemen were unsuccessful at reasoning with the dog, so they called animal control. Before long a woman arrived with what looked like a lasso on a stick and within seconds the poor, grizzled, traumatized dog was coaxed out of the cab of the pickup and into the back of a vehicle specially designed for cases like his. Gramma took down the license number of the old pickup and, if I know her, the man and the dog will be soon be receiving some help from the good people of Gramma's church, whether they like it or not.

With the last nails swept out from under the wheels of the Mustang, we were off to the mall, our time there now greatly reduced. We synchronized our watches and split up, the boys going off in search of music shops, the rest of us to see whatever sights we could manage in an hour and a half. We missed the dolphin show, but did get to watch the lemurs cuddle up with each other or leap from branch to branch in their glassed in cage. Auntie found enough time to buy each of our lucky kids a present and I, to purchase a London Fog (earl grey tea and steamed milk) from the Paris wing. And then it was time to get Gramma home. Auntie suggested the kids, their dad and I stay longer and make our own way home, but we declined. We didn't know the way back very well and we'd had enough excitement for one day. On the way out of the city we saw at least two more vehicles run red lights.

The next day was sunny so we went for a walk with the dogs and then played games in the park across the street from Auntie's house. When it got too hot we went back to the house where Auntie made the adults Margaritas and the kids drinks with juice and crushed ice. Uncle came home from work and barbecued steaks and chicken for us all. He brought the kids Harley Davidson t-shirts and told them stories from his previous life as an officer in the army and how he once clocked 237 kms an hour on his racing bike. No Margaritas for him; he stuck to rum and Coke and later, put out an enormous bowl of chips and three kinds of dip. The boys dove right in, but the girls and I went to bed.

There's no Music like Live Music

It's summer festival season here in British Columbia. Here in my neck of the woods is a little, but mighty festival of the arts with a multicultural theme. The other night my eldest son, Ian and I went to see Poema Flamenco, and boy! are we glad we did. My son's facebook status the next morning was "Ian quite likes flamenco dancers". Along with the four piece band, all men, was a very beautiful dancer. She was so fluid, so strong, so expressive, so commanding a performer we couldn't all help but be completely entranced by her. She also had the great attraction of appearing to enjoy herself to the utmost. At one point in the performance when all was quiet, there was an audible admiring sigh from a male member of the audience - followed by many good-hearted giggles. I even ventured to say that the dancer's performance was a good omen for Spain's World Cup victory the following day, which it was. Viva Espana!

On Wednesday of this week, the event which I have spent five months coordinating came off with nary a hitch. The day was sunny, breezy and warm. Over 500 people, most of them children, came to the Festival Children's Day. It took around sixty five volunteers to do everything required to make the day run smoothly. We offered seven different art activities, outdoor shows of music and an indoor show of comedic high wire acrobatics, a real climbing wall with harnesses and ropes and everything for the energetic kids, science based programs and activities, an activity area for the really young ones, a treasure hunt with a map and clues to solve, etc. It was a great day, and after doing this for five years, I felt I really got it right this time. Needless to say, I went home and lay down for two hours afterwards. My husband and children were all a very big help to me in the preparation and execution of this day, and to them I am extremely grateful. A few of us went that evening to see the amazing poet of a guitarist David Lindley. It felt very good to sit with a drink and do nothing but listen to such a great artist after such a big day.

Last night we went to see the band Peatbog Faeries from the Isle of Skye in Scotland. They are a very high energy brand of celtic funk fusion. We danced a bit, but it was extremely hot in the hall and crowded so we didn't last long. We were all still pretty tired from our efforts of the week.

The festival continues through this weekend, with Spanish band El Puchero del Horteleno, which means "the gardener's stew", ('symbolizing their mix of Flamenco and Rumba with Funk, Pop and Rock' according to the program) as headliners tonight. It will be a good way to round out our festival experience, as we leave tomorrow for a nine day road trip to visit our families in Alberta and the interior of this province.

I will not be taking a computer with me on this trip (I don't have a laptop anyway), but I will be taking a notebook and pen as always. I will catch up with everyone in a couple of weeks' time. In the meantime, enjoy summer wherever you are and if you feel inspired, do take some time to enjoy some live music. There really is no better kind!

The photo was lifted from http://www.poemaflamenco.com/.

Just Desserts

Whew! That last post sure generated a lot of passionate discussion. I'm still reeling, which is why I am going to give you all a break and write about a favourite topic on a lighter note: dessert.

The stages of summer in the Fraser Valley are defined by whatever lucious berry is in season. In June we have strawberries, with the Catholic Women's League's annual strawberry tea as a high point (delicious tiny little tea sandwiches, my favourite is the wrapped asparagus - and a generous portion of homemade strawberry shortcake). Local strawberries are deep red through and through, juicy and quick to spoil - especially if one buys a large quantity late in the season, then develops a secondary sinus infection thus leaving the berries ignored for two days. I had to compost half of them, but the rest are in the freezer thanks to my husband buckling down and helping me hull them and freeze them on trays individually before putting in ice cream buckets to enjoy late in the year with waffles or cake, or soon, in cooling frozen fruit smoothies.

July is defined by raspberries and blueberries. We have our own small plot of raspberry bushes which we pick from every couple of days and enjoy fresh on our granola, or with french toast. This week my girls and I looked after a friends' farm, and one of our 'jobs' was to pick raspberries from their plentiful bushes for our own use, so we will have extra raspberries in the freezer to make up for the dearth of strawberries this year. Blueberries, I buy in quantity and freeze as well, for blueberry sauce, for muffins, or fresh for a favourite family recipe, Blueberry Creamcheese Pie: fresh blueberries surrounded by sweetened blueberry sauce on a minimal layer of lemon-flavoured cream cheese in a graham wafer crust. The only word to describe it is an old one - toothsome. In my parents' part of the province, sweet purple huckleberries are used instead of blueberries. They make an even better pie.

Blueberries continue into August and when they are done it is time to pick wild blackberries from a favourite secret spot. Ours, unfortunately, has been discovered by earlier and more savvy birds than we, so last year we picked at our friends' farm and enjoyed four gallons of blackberries over the winter. Blackberries coincide with the early apples, so apple-blackberry crisp, a favourite of my husband's is a common dessert in our house come the gold-tinged days of autumn.

I include a newly discovered recipe (pictured above) for a dessert I served to friends on Canada's birthday, July 1st. It was so good, it was suggested I put the recipe on my blog. The recipe can also be found in the book Whitewater Cooks at Home, by Shelley Adams (of my hometown). The meringues are crisp on the outside, but chewy and soft in the middle - just the way I like them, and the whipped cream has a slight tang from the sour cream which goes very well with the fruit.

Meringues with Raspberries (or any berry) and Cream

Ingredients:

4 egg whites, room temperature

pinch (1 ml) of salt

1 cup (250 ml) sugar

1 tsp (5 ml) cornstarch

1 tsp (5 ml) lemon juice

1 1/2 cups (375 ml)whipping cream

1/4 cup (60 ml) sour cream

3 Tbsp (45 ml) icing sugar (confectioners sugar - the powdered kind)

2 tsp (10 ml) pure vanilla extract

2 cups (500 ml) fresh raspberries

Method:

Preheat oven to 225 degrees F (105 degrees celcius).

Make 8 approximately 4 inch (10 cm) circles on 2 sheets of parchment paper by tracing a glass or cookie cutter with a pencil or pen. Flip the paper circles over and place them on 2 baking sheets.

Whip the egg whites and salt until frothy on medium high.

Start adding the sugar 1/4 cup (60 ml) at a time and keep beating until the egg whites form stiff peaks and all the sugar is added. Mix the cornstarch and lemon juice together and fold into egg whites gently.

Spread the meringue onto the traced circles making a little nest shape with the back of a spoon.

Bake for about an hour and a half. You don't want the meringues to brown at all so check them at 20 minutes and turn the oven down if necessary. When done they should be dry and crisp and easy to remove from the parchment paper.

Cool on a rack.

Whip cream for a minute or two then add sour cream, icing sugar and vanilla. Whip to soft peaks.

Assemble the meringues on a big platter or individual plates. Pile the tops up with the cream and then the fruit. You can give them a little dusting of icing sugar if you like.

Enjoy! And happy berry season!

A Trip from Bountiful

Maria and Lola were in my Canadian History 101 course at Selkirk College. They arrived each morning in a sleek Buick sedan and left right after classes in the afternoon to make the long drive back home to their fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful. They both wore their hair in the sect's traditional bobbypinned curlycue at each temple, with braids to their waists. Lola wore Little House on the Prairie dresses that looked as if they were made of busily patterned bedsheets - I knew you couldn't buy dress material like that. Maria dressed more modern; she wore plain skirts and collared shirts with a sweater or vest overtop. Both girls were about my age, about eighteen, and both were married already - to men that had multiple wives, but that was nothing unusual in the polygamous community of Bountiful.

Lola barely spoke and always looked ahead, but Maria was more approachable and seemed to me, quite clever with a glimmer of wit in her eyes. She sometimes sat in the upper area of the spacious glass and concrete common room of the college doing homework, and once I got the courage up to speak to her. (I have always been interested in hearing peoples stories. I'm not particularly nosy, but if I think someone might be receptive to questions about themselves, I tend to 'fire away'.) I sat down on the couch opposite Maria and asked her where she lived, even though I already knew the answer. She told me she and Lola were training to be teachers for their community school. Somehow we got on the topic of marriage and she said yes, she was married. I felt comfortable asking her by this point if her husband had more than one wife, and how did she feel about that. She said, oh, it was fine, he was a young man and had only two other wives. I knew that some of the elders of the sect, like leader Winston Blackmore had a lot more wives than that, and some of them even younger than Maria - as young as fifteen. We chatted about other things, about our classes, about the daily three hour round trip to and from the college, and then that was it. I don't think we talked much after that, but we did exchange greetings in our class and in the common room.

Since meeting Lola and Maria, I have maintained an interest in the community of Bountiful. The idea of it has always been reprehensible to me, for I know that all those young girls who are married off as babymakers and 'sister wives' to the men are individuals with dreams and desires of their own. I have also been keenly sympathetic toward the young men who are 'conscripted' out of school far too early to work for the elders' businesses. In recent years, Bountiful has come under scrutiny. The government is trying to find a way to dismantle their polygamous lifestyle, not so much for the idea of multiple wives, but more for the common practise of coersion of very young women to marry men old enough to be their grandfathers.

The communities of Bountiful, and other sister communities south of the border have, to my mind, been dealing with a slow implosion. There have long been two main 'prophets' of the fundamentalist Mormon Sect, and now they are at odds. The communities are becoming divided in their loyalties and young people are questioning the entire system. This I only know from watching documentaries on tv and reading articles in newspapers and magazines over the last couple of years. Jane Blackmore, one of Winston's highly ranked wives, has left the community completely and now works as a midwife in the nearby town of Creston. She and other ex-members of the sect help young people, especially young women to leave the community and start life in what must be an alien social landscape. They also talk to the media, which I am certain is contributing to what I predict to be the eventual downfall of Bountiful.

When I think about Bountiful, I think of Maria and Lola*. I wonder what they are doing now. I wonder if they completed their teacher training. I wonder if they have children. I wonder if they still live in Bountiful. Most of all, like many of the other students I have lost contact with over the years, I wonder if they are happy.

The above photo is from the Vancouver Sun newspaper.

*I changed their names