Steinbach, Manitoba

Earlier this year, my recently-retired, older brother Ernest James Peters (Jim, aka Ernesto for the duration of the trip) went on a 13,000+ km, 45-day road trip with his brother-in-law Bob Banman (aka Roberto), driving down through 7 Central-American countries to the Panama Canal, where they were joined by their wives for the return trip. Jim has posted a click-through trip photo-album (produced in Picaboo, here) that I thought some of our far-flung relatives might enjoy.

I had posted several times about bro Jim’s road-trip exploits earlier—here, here, here, and here.

Vancouver, Canada

Eric Karjaluoto, a well-spoken thought-leader in our field, published a book entitled Speak Human earlier this year. Now he reflects on lessons learned… here.

(Previous posts by, from, or about Eric on this blog appear here).

Steinbach, Manitoba

My aunt, Helen Reimer Eidse, passed on last week… I was among hundreds who attended her funeral here in Manitoba (while thousands more attended simultaneous commemorative services in various cities and communities in Congo, apparently). Having grown up on another continent, I do not, admittedly, know many of my relatives well (in no small part due to their sheer numbers)—Helen was one of my long-since-departed mother’s ten[!] siblings [eight sisters, two brothers])—though in retrospect, I do wish I had had the opportunity to know this fine woman better.

Helen Reimer graduated as a Registered Nurse in 1952, the same year she married Ben Eidse, a talented linguist (who would go on to learn nine languages and ultimately translate the Bible into Chokwe, a Bantu language spoken by nearly 1 million in central Africa, and today the lingua franca of eastern Angola). Fueled by faith-inspired passion to make a positive difference where it was most needed, she gave her heart and a lifetime of service to the people of Congo, where for decades she ran a dispensary, a tuberculosis ward, and a leprosarium (where she administered groundbreaking cures for leprosy in the 1970s), while also bearing and raising four daughters: Hope, Faith, Charity, and Grace (yes it’s true… my cousins).

Among accomplishments far too numerous to list here, she ended up directing a total of 24 clinics, solicited medicinal donations from major pharmaceutical companies for her African charges, delivered over 100 babies per year, and introduced a nutritious strain of multi-colored beans (initially as a single handful to help the lepers in her colony at Kamayala as a simple, practical means for them to grow a nutritious cash crop—and today reportedly selling by the tonnes and one of the most popular offerings in the produce markets of Kinshasha, sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest city [with a population of over 10 million], about 600km from the location of the legumes’ first introduction near the Angolan border)—these are now known across the western Congo as “Mama Eidse beans.” Small wonder then that she is known in that long-embattled country as “Congo’s Mother Theresa.”

After Helen and Ben returned to Steinbach “to retire,” her home became a haven for the elderly, the homeless, and numerous foster children. It’s said that Helen read the newspaper differently from other people, with an eye for those with hurting hearts and broken lives—she called and visited parents whose children had been arrested, driving them to court and sitting with them during trials, and becoming an advocate for “juvenile delinquents” who had no one else to support them. Frugal to the nth degree, this fine woman would reportedly put even the most dedicated of today’s dumpster-divers to shame when it comes to active recycling, re-using, and re-purposing for the benefit of have-nots.

In 1995, Helen suffered a major stroke that confined her to a wheelchair for the ensuing 15 years—though this could not stop her from the prolonged and attentive listening to, singing with, laughing with, and prayer with (and for) all she would encounter. (At the funeral, my aunt Grace Warkentin, Helen’s younger sister, confided that Helen had recently expressed that “she was good and ready to leave this ‘cage of a body’ at any time”)… to which I can only reply: May you fly free and high, with the wings of the angel you seemingly have always been!

Two days after the funeral, I was very pleased to finally spend several hours in heart-felt face-to-face conversation with my cousin Faith Eidse, who had come up from Florida for her mother’s funeral. I’ve posted about Faith previously here—(she’s an award-winning writer, among other accomplishments)—I thought it appropriate to share a short piece that Faith wrote for Rhubarb Magazine here that sets a suitable context for remembering her amazing mother Helen…

Stay good, Menno homies near and far…

Winnipeg, Canada

I’ve long held that “we live in stories,” (a notion I first heard expressed in those four eloquent words by colleague Bruce Brown of Brighton, UK, at a Vancouver GDC conference I was participating in a decade ago). This leitmotif was driven home once again for me yesterday morning while attending a keynote presentation by Gerald Kuehl to hundreds of Manitoba art teachers at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Gerald enraptured those present with passionate, poignant story-telling of his ventures into Manitoba’s and Nunavut’s far-flung communities of First Nation peoples… where he has devoted the past decade-and-a-half to the exquisite portrayal (by means of graphite on paper) of elders—the spontaneous standing ovation at the end of his presentation could hardly do justice to the devoted narrative loosed by his illustrative talents.

This evening Gerald shared an e-mail with me from someone else in the audience on Friday (I hope it’s OK if I pass that on here): “Wow… today was so moving.  I can’t begin to find the words to say how much of what you do touches my heart. I cried throughout, it was so good. You understand us and what we have gone through as a people. I wish there were more people like you. I wish people didn’t hate us just because of who we are but, they do. It’s everywhere and then I have the very good fortune to meet someone like you, someone who does not judge. You are such a good man with a good heart. As my future daughter-in-law says, “I may be white on the outside but, I am brown on the inside.” And this is something you can say too. Thank you so much Gerald and I thank the Creator for showing me you.”

The images above are of Charlie Learjaw and Luke Moose. You can view more of Gerald’s incredible graphite portraiture on his website here. In case you’re wondering, Gerald spends approximately one month on each portrait—he only works in monochrome, in part, because he is colour-blind).

The woods of Eastern Manitoba

I returned from a trip to Asia two weeks ago to quite the nasty surprise—20 inches (50cm) of standing water in the lower level of my home. It seems that we had a massive dump of rain locally while I was away (5 inches in a mere three hours, I’m told) just when the floating switch that turns on the sump pump decided to give up the ghost—the groundwater would have come up fast, and then the efficient concrete heat-sink below grade prevented it from receding.

Needless to say, the past ten days have been a blur of activity (thanks for your help, brother Jim and Evelin, my love!) what with pumping out the house, carting out wet furnishings and belongings, replacing electrical systems (sewage pump and hot water tank), cutting out drywall, bleaching wood, and thorough cleaning… the job’s still far from done and renovations will stretch through much of the winter.

Among the flooded casualties and ruined nostalgia were portfolios of my old drawings… some of which I hadn’t seen since the 1970s. Though mostly stained, torn, wrinkled, warped, and discolored (black mount-board stains adjacent surfaces blue and indigo when in wet contact for long enough—who knew?) I’ve managed to dry and salvage some developmental sketches, a sampling of which appear above.

To be honest, I’d have to say that some of these old drawings have actually been improved by the flood damage…

(from Climbing magazine)

Knots: they attach us to ropes, connect slings to trees, substitute for dropped gear, secure tents, create belay anchors. Like the Force, knots surround us, protect us, and bind our galaxy together. Even a sport climber whose shoes close with Velcro knows a few knots. But here are a few things you might not know.

1) The word “knot” is related to knob, knoll, and knuckle, but not to knowledge. It is knoten in German, knot in Dutch, knut in Swedish, nudo in Spanish, and noeud in French.

2) The Inca’s only “written” language was a system of knots tied into necklace-like “documents” called quipus, or “talking knots.” Some scholars think quipus recorded only numbers, but others believe that they also told stories and encoded historical events. A select class of Incas apparently interpreted the knots, and the code has never been definitively deciphered. Knots were also used for record keeping in ancient China, and the Chinese Book of Changes, almost 2,500 years old, associates knots with contract and agreement.

(I’ve long been a knot-enthusiast. Three years ago, I designed, illustrated, and published a booklet entitled Top Climbing Knots for the Alpine Club of Canada—copies are still available through the Manitoba Section of the ACC).

Ottawa, Canada

Canada Post today released its largest stamp to date. Like the wildlife definitives that preceded it, the Blue Whale stamp was produced using a combination of two printing techniques: intaglio (for the whale in the foreground) and offset lithography (for the colours in the background). Each stamp, illustrated by Suzanne Duranceau (and featuring the work of master engraver Jorge Peral), measures 128 x 49 mm (5″ x 1.9″).

The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the largest animal ever known to inhabit the earth. It can grow up to 33 m (108 ft) long and can weigh up to 180 metric tons (198 tons). The blue whale’s gargantuan proportions remain hidden beneath ocean waves, only to reveal themselves for a brief, awe-inspiring moment whenever this majestic creature rises to the surface to breathe—a whale watcher’s dream on Canada’s Pacific and Atlantic waters. Due to severe hunting practices in the 1900’s, the blue whale is listed as an endangered species under COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada).

Thanks to Matt Warburton for the heads-up.

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equinox late 14c., from O.Fr. equinoce (12c.) or directly from M.L. equinoxium “equality of night (and day),” from L. aequinoctium “the equinoxes,” from aequus “equal” (see equal) + nox (gen. noctis) “night.” The O.E. translation was efnniht. Related: Equinoctial.

Seasonal change is definitely in the air (together with tens and tens of thousands of Canada geese massing for migration—as I noted this morning en route to work), on this special twice-a-year day on which the day’s minutes of daylight equal the minutes of darkness everywhere on our wee planet.

Autumnal up here in the North, Vernal down under… regardless, best equinoctial wishes to dear friends and colleagues far and near!

Winnipeg, Manitoba

I’ve spent the better part of the weekend (with invaluable help from Ev and Simon Statkewich—thanks!) transporting a ton or so of letterpress display type, along with a number of proof presses and assorted letterpress paraphernalia (that I’ve just purchased from colleague Susan McWatt FitzGerald) out to my place in the woods. (Sue, real type fiend, had acquired the entire contents of a letterpress showcard/poster shop from a retired printer some years ago, with full intentions of setting up a viable printing operation in her garage… and that’s where the materiel has languished until now. Her pending move to Newfoundland at the end of this month triggered her offer to sell).

Fonts range in size from around 48 point (mostly lead in sizes under one inch) to about 7 inches in wood, with lots of interstitial sizes including some very condensed faces. Of the dozens of dusty type cases and racks (featuring a wide variety of serif, sans serif, and vintage display faces) most need cleaning and sorting—much of the type was literally “out of sorts” in buckets, crates, boxes, and bags… so it appears that I’ll have plenty of winter-evening activity in the months ahead. Truth be said, I love letterpress typography, and I can hardly wait to sort this all out, clean it all up, and start those presses rolling—lots of poster and card ideas already percolating.

Images above: a sampling of the letterpress display type now in my posession; the proof presses range from about a small DIN A5 size to something like 2′ x 3′; not shown—assorted furniture, quoins, brayers, lots of leading, and hundreds of type-high printer’s cuts and etched illustrations (weighing hundreds of pounds). An online search for the patent number exhibited on the larger press brought up this PDF from 1933.

I’ll post better photos of complete alphabets once I have the chance to clean and sort the type. As I’m very keen to find out the specific names of the fonts I’ve just acquired (all without documentation), I’ll send anyone who can help me identify an actual font name and/or fabricator/origin a nice printers block (advert or editorial illustration) by post—I know there are more than a few typography aficionados who visit here from time to time.

Gooseneck Rocks, NW Ontario (along the road to White Dog First Nation)

I was scheduled to go rock climbing with friends at my favorite crag (the Gooseneck Rocks) this past weekend, but the combination of multiple days of rain along with flagging energy levels dissuaded me in the end. My good friend Simon Statkewich (president of the Alpine Club of Canada, Manitoba Section) did make it out however, and today he sent me the above photo of himself standing on “a wee bit of rockfall” that recently peeled off the base of one of the newer bolted climbs on the Roadside Face (about 7 meters to climber’s left of the start of the classic route Frog-in-the-Crack put up by Peter Aitchison et al in the 1970s).

A quick calculation shows that the granite “flake” Simon is standing on weighs between 40 and 60 tonnes (at 2.691 tonnes per cubic meter). Here’s sincerely hoping there’s no hapless boulderer caught beneath it… Hester? has anyone seen Rob Hester?!?