Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

My friend Patricia Leguen,* the renowned Saskatoon sculptor, has just returned from Italy where she represented Canada at two international snow sculpture competitions with her team-mate Helena Bangert from Amsterdam. Patricia won first place and jury choice in Cortina d’Ampezzo on 22 January 2010 at the International Snow Sculpture Festival in a competition against nine other teams. The event’s theme was skiing, movement, and speed—as the world female downhill skiing championships were taking place at the same time. Patricia’s design, Schuss, was carved out of a 10-ft. cube (3 x 3 x 3 meters) of snow over three days in 25 person-hours.

On 24 January, Team Canada headed to San Martino di Castrozza to the 7th International Snow Sculpture Symposium (26-30 January 2010) to carve another 10-ft cube of snow in 3.5 days. The snow block was very hard and icy and, since no chain saws were allowed, it took 34 person-hours to carve the sculpture entitled Winged Victory, a tribute to the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Their sculpture won third place, with Italy second and Russia first.

*You often meet the most remarkable people when you travel. In June of 2003 I was on my way to an Icograda board meeting and the launch of the Icograda Archives in Brighton, U.K. Patricia was en route to a sand-sculpting event in Belgium (where she and a female colleague from Bellingham finessed a 60-ft.-high sculpture that “the guys were afraid to ascend.”) As fate would have it, we were both upgraded to 1st class on the Toronto-London flight… and so a seven-hour conversation as seat-mates began an interesting and surprisingly enduring friendship—I’ve had the chance to follow Patricia’s winning streak (she’s one of the world’s top ice, snow, sand, and fire sculptors) ever since.

Photos © 2010 Patricia Leguen: the finished Schuss with Patricia alongside; the finished Winged Victory.

(flashback, in situ)

In case you may have missed this selection of eminently quotable profundities, bon mots, maxims, aphorisms, and engaging witticisms by the sage rhetoricist Marshall McLuhan when first posted here—well, here we go again…

+  +  +  +  +

Whereas convictions depend on speed-ups, justice requires delay.

Money is the poor man’s credit card.

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.

We march backwards into the future.

Invention is the mother of necessities.

You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong?

Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth.

The trouble with a cheap, specialized education
is that you never stop paying for it.

People don’t actually read newspapers.

They step into them every morning like a hot bath.

Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade.

The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.

News, far more than art, is artifact.

When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body.

Tomorrow is our permanent address.

All advertising advertises advertising.

The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.

Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.

The missing link created far more interest
than all the chains and explanations of being.

When a thing is current, it creates currency.

Food for the mind is like food for the body:
the inputs are never the same as the outputs.

The future of the book is the blurb.

The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.

A road is a flattened-out wheel, rolled up in the belly of an airplane.

I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.

This information is top security.
When you have read it, destroy yourself.

(Image: detail of rear-view McLuhan photograph taken by the late great Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh on 21 January, 1967)

Winnipeg, Canada

I’ve been asked to present at GDC Manitoba’s PechaKucha Night two weeks from now (Wednesday, 17 February 2010). PechaKucha is an event/format devised in Tokyo in 2003 for designers and creatives to meet, network, and show their work in public (drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat,” PechaKucha is a presentation format based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds each x inspiring, motivated creative speakers). In recent years PechaKucha has ballooned in popularity, with events happening around the world. Learn more about the upcoming gig (free admission, cash bar) at the lovely old Park Theatre in Winnipeg here.

Wednesday, 17 February 2010
The Park Theatre, 698 Osborne Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Doors open at 19:30, first presenter at 20:20 (of course).

Winnipeg, Manitoba

If you’re in the vicinity of the city this Friday, 5 February, please join my girlfriend (Evelin Richter) and me at the opening reception of the Manitoba Crafts Council 2010 Members’ Showcase, from 7-10pm, at the Cre8ery Gallery in Winnipeg, 2nd floor, 125 Adelaide (in the Exchange District). Ev will be exhibiting three figurative sculptures alongside 29 other MCC members who will be exhibiting works: PJ Anderson, Aliza Amihude, Jan Ashton, Marilyn Folson, Ursula Neufeld, Louise Gardiner, Michael Astill, Linda Glowacki, Jolanta Sokalska, Natasha Halayda, Kathleen Black, Elise Nadeau, Pat Findlay, LeVerne Tucker, LeeAnne Penner, Carol James, Alison Norberg, Karen Schlichting, Tammy Sutherland, Valerie Metcalfe, Kathryne Koop, Rachael Kroeker, Helen Lyons, Jayne Nixon, Evelin Richter, Lily Rosenberg, Zbigniew Sokalski, Susan Styrchak, Gaetanne Sylvester and Karen Taylor.

The show will run until 16 February (gallery hours are 12-5pm Tuesday to Saturday, 6-10pm Monday and Thursday). The opening will offer the chance to meet the showcased artists, with snacks and a cash bar available.

Duncan, British Columbia

Betty called me yesterday, Louis… to tell me you were gone. She told me that you had passed on suddenly, and without pain. We cried together on the phone, she assured me that Chris and Vincent were there with her… and that they were all going to be OK. This evening I found your obituary online—and I’m still having a tough time believing you’ve actually left us.

I remember you well as one of my first design clients (thanks for your enabling trust!), and then working with you when you turned entrepreneur to launch your own fashion business. I remember going to your rally races (the fact that you drove a clunky Volvo was made up for by your driving prowess), the many years we went hunting together (some more successful and/or eventful than others—but an annual highlight nonetheless), the gourmet meals we shared (the fact you were an oenophile didn’t hurt), and the great times of fellowship and laughter. My most sustaining memory of you, however, will be your profound humanity… and the way you treated every person that you’d encounter with genuine interest and care. This world could use more of your ilk.

I’ll miss you my friend… rest in peace, Louis Denis Spronken.

Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba

Best wishes on this ostentatious day, Jennifer! (Your mother dug up this old photo of you last night while we were talking about your arrival on this planet back in the seventies… you may find it encouraging to know that if the Neurophysiologist gig isn’t working out for you, or becomes boring, you might still have a shot at success being a bunny—the advantage of being both smart and cute).

Smile for the camera…

Saint-Sauveur, Quebec

Kate… you will be missed by many in this land, and beyond.

Winnipeg, Canada

This year’s Annual General Meeting of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada/Manitoba Chapter will be held at the Park Theatre, 698 Osborne Street in Winnipeg at 19:00 on Tuesday, 19 January 2009. In addition to the expected conduction of business maters, mingling, door prizes, snacks and drinks, the GDC will be screening director Gary Hustwit’s recently-launched documentary film Objectified—an exploration of our complex relationship with manufactured objects and the people who design them.

Free to all comers, GDC members or not…

Ottawa, Canada

The anarchist professor Denis G. Rancourt argues quite compellingly that global warming, rather than being “the greatest potential threat to humankind and the planet,” is in fact a myth and a red herring that contributes conveniently to the hiding of what is the planet’s most destructive force—power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might. He suggests that liberal tree-hugging activists (ouch—this stings) who buy into and feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, distracted from more urgent causes, or at best neutralized. Read a piece on this that Denis wrote here. (Though I’m somewhat reluctant to admit it, I’m starting to believe the man might be right).

Rancourt’s real concern is that if/when Carbon Trade has been introduced and established (as a result of the current, wrong-headed, singular focus on global warming), this will continue to misinform and obfuscate—essentially creating a smokescreen for the genuine causal issues: unethical and unsustainable corporate and political practices.

Thanks to new e-friend Laila Rashidie for the heads-up re: Rancourt; thanks to old friend Gregor Brandt for the cartoon above (which makes me feel a bit better, should Rancourt be right).

Winnipeg, Canada

My cousin Tim was laid to rest today…

I hardly knew you, Tim. But I’m very glad I attended your funeral. I learned more about you in an hour than I had known since you married my cousin, Ruth Koop, 36 years ago. I met your two handsome and well-spoken adult sons (for the first time)… and I listened carefully, with tears in my eyes, as one person after another stepped up to the microphone to share their recollections of you.

In case you weren’t listening in, they described you as “one of the most decent people you could ever know,” (that was your boss, by the way); as wise, rational, vital, fair, modest, understated, decent, knowledgeable, ethical, humble, good-natured, energetic, gentle, and loving; and as a brilliant thinker with a quick wit, as someone always on the side of the underdog, as someone perpetually giving and generous with your time, as a lifelong conservationist (choosing walking or cycling over driving, even in our brutal climate), as a peace-maker, as a tireless volunteer and champion of social justice, and as a man of great integrity—and few words.

I really do wish I had known you better, Tim.

Rest in peace…