the cassandra pages

Cassandra at Twenty

Today this blog celebrates its twentieth anniversary. I almost forgot, because I was focused on it being the first day of spring: an event we're eagerly anticipating up here but about which there's been precious little evidence, other than the maple sap running, and brighter, longer days. However, I'll post these grape hyacinths in the hope that we'll be seeing real ones -- in about a month.

The craziness of living in, and enduring, such a northern climate may be matched by the craziness of having blogged here for twenty years. Or perhaps I'm just stubborn. Social media was supposed to be the death of blogging, and it did do-in most of the blogs that started when mine did. Other platforms were touted as the next best thing, but I think most bloggers just got fatigued. Keeping up a blog, trying not to repeat yourself, and finding something personal to say is hard enough over years and years, but when the readers and commenters start to go away, it's even harder to remember why you began it in the first place.

But I do remember: I was a journal writer and determined letter-writer, with a well-established practice, and blogging fit me to a T, not only because it satisfied those same urges, but because it also added the possibility of a visual component. The latter, of course, became the raison d'être for Instagram, and I have loved being part of a community of artists and photographers there. But for those who want to write regularly and seriously, nothing has really worked as well as blogs, and for someone like me who's a visual artist as well, and wants to own her own website rather than be data-harvested at every click of the mouse and keyboard, blogging has continued to be the best choice. I guess stubborn perseverance has just kept me at it, because first of all I write and make a record of my art for myself -- I'd do this anyway -- but how much better it is to share it with you, communicate with you, and get to know each other.

Jacaranda blooms in Mexico City, back in March, 2017.

The doubts I was having about blogging a few years ago have mostly disappeared. It's clear to me that this is where I belong, and that it works for me. Adding an art education component will satisfy another strong urge in me: to teach and encourage others who may have always wanted to draw or paint, or who want to do it better; or encourage those who loved making art when they were kids, only to get discouraged or distracted along the way.

A recent change is that I have begun mirroring this blog on Substack. The content will be exactly the same, but if people want to subscribe there and receive a notification via email when there's a new post, that's an easy way to get one. (I know some of you don't use feed readers, which is another possibility. While I do always post a link to new posts on Facebook, you may not be there either.) Substack posts also receive a link on my Twitter feed. Many Substack writers are trying to get people to subscribe for a monthly or yearly payment. I'm not going to do that; the content here has always been free, and I see no reason to change that. The only possible exception would be if I decide to offer formal online art courses, but that's a ways into the future and won't impact the blog at all.

Red bottle-brush tree bloom, from the same Mexico City trip.

Whether you have been reading my words and looking at my pictures for twenty years or have just found me recently, I want to say thank you. It's humbling to know that people come here repeatedly, looking for some solace or calmness in the difficult days we are all facing, and I'm glad that the writing and art which help sustain me also, sometimes, help to sustain you. After all, that's why we think deeply, why we create, and why we are here together. Thank you for visiting, and for encouraging me with your presence. If you've never left a comment, that's absolutely fine, but please don't be shy -- I try to respond personally to all comments, and will be really glad to hear from you. And for those of you who've become my friends over the years, whether virtually or in real life, and in so many corners of the globe -- how amazing it is that we found each other, and how everlastingly grateful I am for the ways in which we enrich each other's lives! 

New Year in a New Neighborhood

New snow. Watercolor with pencil, in Stillman&Birn sketchbook, 9" x 6", 12/29/22

The Christmas storm blanketed Montreal with a thick, wet coat of snow, and then freezing rain fell on top of it. On the 27th, we went out into the countryside to a friend's house, where there had been no rain, and even more snow -- several feet of it -- lay pristinely on the ground and the rooftops. Not so here in the city, where by New Year's nearly all the snow was gone.

Until last night that is, when it snowed again. The weather has been unremittingly grey, but I've enjoyed the changing moods outside my studio window. There's really nothing very exciting to draw, on the surface of things -- a little park, a car dealer close by, an empty parking lot, a street heading off into the suburban rooftops of TMR (Town of Mont-Royal) with lots of trees, and beyond them, the distant buildings of northern Montreal past rue Sauve. On clear days we can see the foothills of the Laurentians. None of this is worth a painting on its own strength, but what interests me is how the weather affects the scene, how every day is actually as different as the moods of the sea, how the changing light and atmospheric conditions alter the emotional temperature of what I see -- and feel. Trying to capture some of that is a worthy sketchbook challenge.

The painting at the top was a difficult one and I struggled to pull something out of it after getting very discouraged with the page about halfway through, and not wanting to overwork the watercolor. Adding some sketchy, loose details in dark brown helped a lot, as did increasing the contrast overall by deepening the shadows.

Melting snow. Charcoal in Fabriano sketchbook, 14" x 11". 

I bought a new, large sketchbook this week specifically for charcoal drawings and pastel sketches, such as the image above.

While I often drew or painted the park across the street from our old place, and documented the seasons, it never seemed to change so much day-to-day and therefore wasn't as interesting to me, even though it was vastly more "beautiful." Probably if I'd had a higher vantage point it would have been different, because here the sky takes up more than half of my view, and the condition of that sky says everything about how the land and city look below it.

Snowy day. Direct watercolor in sketchbook, 9" x 6".

Right now it's starting to snow again, so the scene is even whiter and more ethereal than in this watercolor sketch, completed only an hour ago. Color fades to the barest hint of itself; the indistinct horizon blurs even more and comes closer; trees and rooftops lose their sharp edges. 

Today's view feels chalky, and I'm looking forward to trying to capture it in pastels, but in a little while the sun will have gone down, so that may have to wait until tomorrow -- when who knows what the sun and sky will be doing? 

 

Present Moments: Our Own, and Others'

Young woman on the metro, watercolor in sketchbook, 6" x 9".

Happy Thanksgiving. We celebrated last weekend with my sister-in-law and her husband, and since we're in Canada, it's an ordinary day today for most people. However I'll probably never feel that way - Thanksgiving was such an important holiday for my family, and a time when I almost always traveled home to be with them. When possible, we've also tried to celebrate it with friends; I love the feasting and gathering aspect of the day but most of all its meaning, as a time to be grateful.

Gratitude isn't so easy these days when it often feels like the whole world is falling apart at the seams. I think we all hoped that as the pandemic became more manageable and understandable, the world would somehow "come round right" but the exact opposite has happened. My coping practice, not just when it all becomes overwhelming, is to try to stay in the present moment, using all my senses to be mindful of what is going on, and all that is good in my life right now. The attention begins with the breath and moves out into the immediate environment, and I often recall the words of a Zen teacher: "When we manage to focus on the present moment, we usually find out that it is all right." Obviously, nobody can stay there for very long, but even a few minutes of mindful attention bring me back to my center and greater peacefulness, and then I'm more able to cope with whatever needs to be done. And, God knows, I have so much to be grateful for.

Robbie, a regular commenter on this blog, suggested that a little less seriousness and a bit more entertainment here might be something to consider. I don't know that this blog will ever fall into the category of "entertainment" but I agree with him that a lighter tone or perhaps more anecdotes might be good for me too. Like my father, Robbie makes a point of engaging the people he encounters and seeing if he can make them smile. What a lot of readers probably don't know about me is that I do this too, and always have; I found the taciturn and private nature of New Englanders a big challenge! Here, speaking a minority language can also create difficulties in making connections, as I found when I lived in a French-speaking area, but there are so many other ways to do it -- as children, pets, music, knitting, and urban sketching make clear! And frankly, it hasn't been a big problem for me. Montreal is a place where bilingualism and tri-lingualism are not only common but part of the city's fabric that we appreciate, and learning to communicate and make friends across those potential divides has been one of the things I've enjoyed most about living here. You have to plunge in, make mistakes, be human and friendly, and not get discouraged if some people don't return your friendliness; others will.

The neighborhood where I used to live, Plateau Mont-Royal, was predominantly French, rather entitled, and somewhat closed-in on itself. Our new neighborhood, Cote-des-Neiges/Notre-Dame-de-Grace, is the most ethnically- and linguistically-mixed in the city, with some 48 languages spoken regularly in homes. In the elevators of our 12-story modern condo building, we hear neighbors speaking French, English, Chinese, Spanish, Yiddish, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Filipino, various Indo-Iranian languages, and many others. English, rather than French, is the most common language people use to say good morning and wish each other a good day. There is a huge Asian grocery market across the street, a Romanian charcuterie and bakery, and an eastern European/Russian/Ukrainian market around the corner; nearby on Victoria Avenue is a big kosher bakery, and that street is lined with Indian, Vietnamese, and Jewish restaurants and shops -- to name just a few - while in other directions the concentration shifts to African and Caribbean, Iranian and Turkish, Portuguese, Greek and Middle Eastern, Mexican and Latin American. Not only is this mixture invigorating for all the senses, it encourages me to learn some words in more languages and try to connect with the Chinese butcher, the Ukrainian woman behind the prepared-food-counter, the Romanian couple who run the charcuterie, the Israeli pharmacist, the Lebanese dry-cleaner, the Muslim car mechanic, the Filipino cleaning woman whose schedule is the same as mine for the pool locker room, the Greek fishmonger. But even more than that, living this way is a daily reminder that the people of the world actually can co-exist, and help each other to thrive.

We Montrealers do pretty well with that, but the situation is far from perfect. Outside the city itself, Quebec is much less diverse. The conservative provincial government has passed new laws ostensibly to strengthen and protect the French language -- which I agree should be protected -- but they are written in a way that discriminates against minorities. And hate crimes, while rare, do occur. Last night, in fact, there was a hit-and-run incident in a nearby neighborhood, captured on a closed-circuit camera, where a car accelerated toward a Hasidic woman pushing a baby carriage across the street, struck the carriage and dragged it for some distance before speeding away. The baby inside was miraculously unhurt. People are shocked and upset that this happened and a search is on to identify the car and its driver.

Of course, I'm coming to all of this from a position of privilege, both through my whiteness and my economic security. But because of being in a long-term, ethnically-mixed marriage, I'm sensitive to the lack of awareness, micro-aggressions and constant pressure to hold one's tongue that come from living in primarily white, privileged, homogeneous North American communities, and the self-protectiveness, frustration, depression, and anger that can result. It's very hard to change anything when people stay only in their own comfort zone -- which is, itself, a privilege -- and do whatever they can to protect that. I've been in the minority a lot, and it changes everything about your view: my empathy has come to lie with those who are considered "other".

In the end, breaking barriers comes down to familiarity, being human with each other, and finding our common ground. Yesterday I had to go into the center of Cote-des-Neiges for a blood test at the local CLSC. The Centre de prélèvement (testing/sampling) is on the third floor of a nondescript building; in the elevator with me were a staff woman with a cart of plastic containers filled with disposed syringes; an elderly Eastern European woman in a headscarf and heavy coat who could barely walk, supported by her daughter; and two young friends, one of whom stopped and leaned her head, eyes shut, against the wall after she got out, before entering the testing area. Oh dear, I thought, she's so afraid of something, maybe needles. If she hadn't had a companion, I would have spoken to her and tried to help.

The testing center is staffed by people who are just as diverse as what I've been describing, and they switch seamlessly between French and English; the receptionist and I spoke both languages during our exchange and I don't think either of us really thought about which one we were using. I had the same nurse as the last time I was there, and she gestured to me to sit in the comfortable chair near her work area. We spoke about the weather and how soon it was getting dark in the afternoons, as she noted the instructions and got out the proper vials. "Are you OK with blood tests?" she asked, as she prepared to tie the rubber band above my elbow. "I love them," I said, smiling. She said, "You're my first!!" and we both started laughing. "I won't faint, if that's what you mean," I added. "OK," she said, "One-two-three..." It didn't hurt much, and was over very soon. "You're good," I said, "that was pretty easy." "Thanks," she replied, fastening the gauze with some adhesive tape and smiling at me as she held it for a few moments. I got up, put on my coat, and wished her a good day, hoping that the woman from the elevator had survived her own ordeal and that someone had been kind to her, too.

On the way home, on the metro, I couldn't help noticing the young woman across from me, lost in her music. We are all living our own present moments, I thought, but in this urban environment, there are so many times when those moments intersect: opportunities to be interested in each other, and grow in sensitivity to the multiplicity of ways in which we are human.

The End of Autumn

I wrote a whole post earlier this week, and then Typepad went down due to a DDoS attack, and lost it. Now the platform is up again, but it's impossible to post any images because Typepad is having difficulty migrating to a new server.

The best news is that we finished the studio move on October 30 - the space is swept and empty, and we returned the keys. It's hard to believe that we're actually done. It was a good space for us for many, many years and I'm grateful for that.

Meanwhile, the leaves are coming off the trees and winter definitely approaches, even though we haven't had a major frost yet. We've usually had freezing weather by Halloween, but not this year -- in fact, it's supposed to be 68 degrees this weekend.

I began a new sketchbook in October, and so far it seems to be much more experimental than the previous one, perhaps as a result of the utter upheaval in my artistic life due to the studio move, that has made continuity next to impossible and perhaps not even desirable. I've been working in gouache and acrylic on paper, in addition to watercolor, and that feels good. But I hope to get back to some larger charcoal drawings and some paintings this winter. The new studio is quite small but efficient, and I think I'll be able to manage by working on one thing at a time rather than spreading out a bunch of stuff and leaving it there, just because of a surfeit of space.

Also, Instagram is troubling me these days. I spend too much time scrolling through my feed. I'm not sure if stepping away for a while is the right move, or sharply decreasing my time there, or simply cutting down the number of people I follow, but I do need to make some changes.

Let's hope the blog issues get resolved soon, but in the meantime, I'll try to write here a bit more often. I hope you are gracefully navigating the change of seasons where you live, if in fact you have a change -- it's never entirely easy. Always happy to hear from you in the comments, and with a bit more time now, I will try to reply!

 

 

 

 

 

A Visual Diary

 

Sketchbook, July 2021-September 2022. (Best if viewed full screen, and you can click CC for some captions.)

It always strikes me, when I finish a sketchbook, how much like a diary it actually is. During this journey through a little more than a year -- a year that's seen a lot of upheaval and emotion and change -- the images and the choices recall exactly where I was and what I was thinking, while to the viewer, they probably look like innocuous still lives, landscapes and skyscapes. In some ways, this visual diary is more personal and secret and coded than written words could ever be.

On the other hand, I hope it's interesting to look at, whether you know any of the underlying aspects or not. From an artistic point of view, I like the two loose watercolors of Parc Lafontaine, in the fall and in the winter, and then the explorations of the sky, where the watercolors and one lone acrylic attempt to capture something that was quite new to me, and elusive.

I feel like I've had little time to really focus on art this year, which I'm sorry about, but at least there was this sketchbook which I kept going, and took with me on the trips to the lake to care for my father. It was often hard to draw -- I just didn't have the emotional bandwidth -- but the desire is coming back now, and I'm glad about that.

 

Watery

The clouds and sky continue to fascinate me, especially when storms are brewing and the clouds become full of water. They inspired me to get out my acrylics and do this fast sketch on paper the other day: brushes full of water and pigment, making marks to depict clouds and sky, which actually have no pigment at all, just light and dust and water in various forms, from vapor to droplets to ice. It's curious when you think about it.

Water has also entered my life in another way recently: I've gone back to swimming because we have a pool in our new building. During the pandemic I haven't swum at all, and even before, it was really hard for me to keep it up as a regular practice. The best routine for me at the moment seems to be settling into every other day, around 7:30 in the morning. There's seldom anyone else in the pool then, and I can swim my laps in an atmosphere that feels extremely meditative even when I'm working hard. It feels great to enter the water, and after a few laps, everything sort of melts away as the rhythm of the strokes, the breaths, and the turns takes over.

When I began to do it seriously, a month ago, I started out fairly easily, trying not to strain my shoulders or lower back, and now I'm swimming about twenty minutes straight, and will work up to thirty. A couple of times a week I've also been doing yoga, and we're walking and biking quite a bit in the new neighborhood, which, once you get away from the main streets where there's busy traffic, is much quieter and less congested for cycling than our old one.

Moving more always feels better, but I certainly don't think of myself as an athlete, and like many of us, I've sometimes tended to do something new for a while and then get out of the habit, though I've walked regularly for years and years. However, as I've considered my father's long life, there's no denying that regular exercise played a huge role in his physical and mental well-being. Being able to make swimming the central activity would be a very good fit for me. It's hard to express how happy and comfortable I've always felt when I'm in the water. Being able to swim regularly, without the obstacle of commuting to a distant pool, feels like a great privilege, as well as doing my body a lot of good. I hope I can keep it up.

19 Years

Today marks nineteen years of continuous blogging here, and I find myself at a loss for words. Partly because it doesn't even make sense to me that I've done this for that long; partly because Cassandra -- like nearly everyone else -- failed to predict the tragedy unfolding in the Ukraine with its huge ramifications for the world's political future; and partly because -- also like nearly everyone else -- I am weary, and unable to package things up into any sort of comforting explanation or pretty picture, either for myself, or for public consumption.

But that's all right. There are times in all of our lives when we simply have to let go of and be still, finding consolation and strength in the simplest things: a raindrop hanging on a branch; a cat playing with a ribbon; the clouds traversing the sky; damp earth emerging from the snow.

Making Sense Out of Chaos

Our houseplants all go outside on the terrace in the summer, and in the winter they're on tables near the front windows, under plant lights. Unlike the summer arrangement, when each one is in its ideal growing spot, shown off to best advantage, and augmented with flowering annuals, the winter situation is crowded. Every plant gets plenty of water and food and light, but there's no way I can give each one exactly what it needs. Nor is the arrangement nearly as attractive; we're talking about survival in limited space.

Because of that, I've felt a lot less compelled to draw or paint the plants indoors. Each is competing with the next one, so you can't even see the beautiful leaves of the begonias, or the lacy foliage of the scented geraniums, or the sculptural succulents. They're all crammed together in a cluttered busy-ness that rivals any English cottage garden for visual competition. Nevertheless, the other night, I just felt like something was prompting me to have a go -- maybe it was the felt-like foliage of that ridiculously enormous Kalanchoe beharensis "Fang", in the center.

I propped my watercolor box on the chair near my knee, and started painting directly, laying down one color after another, as quickly as I could, to try to capture the energy and chaotic over-crowding of the scene before me. The terracotta pots and wooden table gave the picture a little bit of unification and structure, but basically there wasn't any overall composition to be had. Nor were there strong shapes - just the big fleshy leaves of "Fang". The geranium in the background, the butterfly-like triangles of the oxalis, the succulents, and the busy needles of the rosemary plant were all similar enough in size to compete with each other, but not stand out. I just kept at it, adding brushstrokes, dashes, lines, dots. Once all the color was on the page, I went back with a pen and sketched in some loose shapes and lines, and finally added the vertical window blinds in the background with watercolor.

The only solution, it had seemed, was just to go for the visual clutter. Feeling dubious, I posted the image on Instagram, with the slightly apologetic comment, "Once again, fascinated by the busyness of plants." A little while later, my friend Michael Szpaskowski and I had this exchange:

Michael: "And that that ‘busyness’ becomes the compositional imperative here is great. Both truthful (I’m not saying that artistic truth is always of this nature of course) and very beautiful."

Beth: "It is both the compositional imperative and its greatest obstacle. The urge is to bludgeon the busyness into some sort of submissive order, but that wouldn't be true. So then what do you do?...I like aspects of it, but it still doesn't entirely work for me. Tonight I was thinking maybe if I tried it from a high angle, the ovals of the tops of the pots would give a compositional rhythm that might unify the picture a little more. But not sure if I have the energy for another try!"

Michael: "Oh it is precisely its ‘awkwardness’ that I find so winning!"

This was a very helpful exchange, because when I studied the image again with his words in mind, I realized that it was actually OK not to have a strong and obvious composition or structure; instead there's color and life dancing all over the image, and the loose horizontal and vertical lines do just enough work to hold everything within the frame.

Chaos is all around us these days. Here in Quebec, we're in a terrible situation, at or near the peak of the current Omicron wave, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. Yesterday, a government report was obtained and published by RadioCanada, detailing plans to stop trying to isolate COVID patients in hospitals, allow workers to return to work even if they're still ill, accelerate discharges, decrease the level of care if necessary in order to provide at least some care to more people, and even ask patients' families to provide basic care (feeding, cleaning, bed changing, etc) for them in the hospital to free up the staff to do clinical work. It's shocking that it's come to that; the whole system is in danger of breaking down -- and that's in a province with 90% of the people vaccinated with at least two doses. There simply isn't sufficient infrastructure to deal with this many patients when we don't have enough staffed acute care beds, and so many healthcare workers are either out sick themselves, or have quit over the past two years. And the government has also made a series of disastrous decisions, such as delaying the booster campaign until Omicron was already upon us. I'm angry about this, frustrated, and worried.

And of course, it's not just COVID that gives us all a sense of uncontrolled chaos: the news from the U.S. is terrible, Europe is in disarray, there may be war in Ukraine, the climate crisis envelops all of us, lots of our friends and family are sick, many of us have had health or psychological problems because of the unremitting stress, or delayed and limited access to care, we can't see the people we want to, or go where we'd like, and the future continues to feel entirely uncertain.

Is it possible, as in the picture, to simply embrace some of that craziness and uncertainty, instead of -- as I wrote to Michael, "trying to bludgeon the busyness into some sort of submissive order"? Can we sit with it, and even find some beauty and truth there? That's a hard task, but it seems to me that it's more realistic -- and potentially more helpful -- than fighting and resisting what is.

Since Christmas, I've been starting each day with half an hour of yoga practice. Doing this regularly is new to me. I can feel my body responding slowly to the daily movements: already I'm a little bit stronger, more flexible, with better balance. But I think I've been helped equally by the mental discipline of a daily commitment, conscious breathing, and then the attentive relaxation at the end, followed by some time on my mat and cushion in meditation - even if it's just five minutes of awareness and gratitude for being here, right now. It makes a difference. I still get upset, but I can see that, like the gradual body changes, there's a gradual emotional shift toward greater equanimity in spite of what's going on around me.

There are other ways to encourage a shift: we all need to find what works for ourselves. The only point I'm trying to make is that when we can't change the big, chaotic, confusing, intractable external things, sometimes there is potential movement inside ourselves -- if we're willing to change old habits and ideas, and experiment a little.

Lights on at 1 pm: Winter Solstice

The shortest day of the year was a sunny one in Montreal, at least for the brief daylight hours. I started this quick watercolor after lunch, and noticed that the park lights came on at 1 pm! It's 3:45 now, and the sun is going down - there are just some last rays on the tops of the trees, and white snow on the ground that looks as though it might stay. If I ever forget how far north we live, the solstice reminds me.

The day may have been sunny, but the mood in the city definitely is not, as we battle an Omicron surge that is frightening in its speed and intensity of transmission. Many restrictions have been put in place already by the province, including closing the schools, and our mairesse, Valerie Plante, has declared a state of emergency from her home, where she is isolating after testing positive herself. The hospital emergency rooms are already near capacity.

My Christmas wish to all of you is to that you won't disregard the threat of this variant. The behavior you've adopted that has kept you safe so far is probably not enough to avoid infection. Please get a booster if you're eligible; wear a high-quality or a double mask; keep your social contacts and your errands in public places to a minimum. The exponential rise in cases we are seeing here is astounding, and half or more of those admitted to hospital are now double-vaccinated people.  Booster roll-out has been slow in Canada; here in Quebec only the elderly have received third doses, and people above 65 have just recently become eligible to make appointments -- the virus is taking full advantage of that fact. (My own appointment is scheduled for December 27.) And while hospitalizations are about a third of the level they were with the first wave, and deaths are still fairly low, the danger is not just to the elderly or vulnerable, or the unvaccinated. A two-month old baby died of COVID in hospital here last week. Please, be very cautious, and if you live in a place where Omicron has not yet hit, think very carefully about your holiday plans, who you will be seeing, and what it means to love them, because with this variant, everything can change in a week or less. This is one year when the pressure or desire to visit one's family should take a back seat to protecting them. I say this particularly to my friends in the U.S., many of whom still seem oblivious to what we are going through up here -- and it's not even the worst of it yet -- or what people in Europe are going through.

So it will be a different Christmas, once again...we have a tree, and lights, and the smells of baking; there's snow outside and warmth inside, but the holiday will be a quiet one. I'm sure we'll check in with friends and family via zoom. My daily task is to keep my own spirits up, and to face the seemingly-interminable pandemic, and uncertainty about the future, with courage. It's not easy for me, and takes conscious intention. Today before I got up I thought quite a bit about gratitude. Later I baked a complicated cake, made some five-pointed origami stars, wrote letters, took a long vigorous walk in the park, and still, I felt the presence of discouragement and anxiety in the background. The predictability of the solstice is ancient and steady, though -- and I took comfort in that.

Christmas Fruit, and Breakthrough Color

I don't have many words to offer today, but I do have some color. This bowl of fruit was declared off limits for one evening, when I did the watercolor, and then was very quickly eaten over the next days. Pomegranates and clementines seem like the most festive of all.

In spite of the fact that Quebec has an extremely high vaccination rate, cases are surging here as they are almost everywhere, driven not by Omicron - yet - but by infections among young children at schools and daycares, who infect their parents, who then take the virus to the workplace. Fortunately, hospitalizations and deaths are still low, and more and more of the 5-11 year-olds are getting vaccinated. Omicron is still a very small percentage, but increasing fast: it will explode, and soon.

It's all really depressing. I won't be eligible for a booster until early January. More restrictions are likely to be imposed, and in my opinion, far too late. The federal government of Canada is requesting that all international trips be cancelled, and it sounds like border restrictions will be re-imposed soon. "Rethink your holiday parties," is both lame and ineffective, but people are desperate to be with their families, too. Sadly, we had already cancelled our plans to be with my father in upstate New York today for his 97th birthday, and obviously we won't be seeing our American family members for Christmas. I have to just try not to think about what that means. Meanwhile, in the U.S. and many other places, people seem to be doing whatever they feel like, and counting on their vaccinations to protect them from serious illness. I hope it works, and wish them well.

So, all I can say, from this interior space where I will be for most of the next few months: color helps. And reading. I've been working on a new print, which you'll see eventually: the carving was complicated and absorbing, and the repetitive process of printing is calming. I've been grateful for it.

I want to think not about breakthrough infections, but about breakthrough color: the way primary red and yellow, and gamboge and intense cobalt blue and viridian push aside everything else we're obsessing about, and make us stop and look, make us feel something emotional and positive.

How are things where you are? And what's helping you cope this holiday season?