Monday, September 17, 2007

Sackville

I must first apologize for neglecting my blogging duties - it has been two weeks since my last update. But I swear I have a good excuse. I blame it upon the mountain of bicycles that arrived in Sackville at the same time as I did. Sackville is a university town, without a bike shop now for more than five years, where I just happened to arrive during frosh week. So I was kept busy keeping people on their bikes - not unpleasant by any means, but definitely exhausting.

And not just that. Sackville seems to have a social scene disproportionately large for such a small town. There were art shows, music shows, cinema, softball games, ultimate games, and a great pub named Ducky's where they sell an awesome blueberry ale topped off with a spoonful of wild blueberries.

And even that was not the end of my distractions. Perhaps because I'm getting so close to my one-time homes people from my past kept trickling through the gallery. First Nick Carmichael, a friend from the Split Crow in Halifax invited me to his nearby cottage for his birthday party. We ate and drank and swam and played tennis on his grandfather-in-law's amazing clay tennis court. I've played a lot of tennis in my life but never on clay before and I like it. Then Naoko Ando, a classmate of mine from the Stephenville days walked into the gallery completely without warning. Apparently she and her husband have been living in Sackville and running a book store since the last time I saw her in about 2001. Next Meghan Harding, my roommate from Vancouver, showed up. She was in town on business at the university and of course we went for a few bkueberry ales before she had to leave. And last in the parade was Craig Francis Power. I know Craig a little bit from my days in St. John's, where he is now ironically the coordinator of the gallery I'm showing at there. He's in town for the Struts 25th Anniversary exhibition (he was an artist in residence here a few years ago) which is opening tonight. I couldn't take anymore though so I hit the road this morning and this blog post is coming to you from the woods near Tatamagouche (try saying it out loud for the full comedic affect).





So again I apologize for neglecting my duties, but, as you can see, I had some other things to do.

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