Something grave

"Graveyard!" I exclaim excitedly to my travelling companion Josh, who had joined me for the first two weeks of my foray to Eastern Canada.  We had driven up the east coast of Nova Scotia and were now in Cape Breton Island on our way to hike the Cabot Trail.  During this first week of being together I had caused no shortage of eye rolls from him in my enthusiasm for pointing out the multitude of neat little graveyards that dotted the sides of the road.  They had little crosses and headstones!  This was exciting to me!  After all, I had grown up in a place where headstones were uncommon.  Plaques parallel to the ground were used for easy lawncare purposes so that graveyards looked merely like rolling grassy hills than a place that monumented where people were buried.  So any graveyard that looked like an actual graveyard thrilled me.

Someone cleared their throat beside me.  "Perhaps you can tell me why you find a graveyard exciting?" A female voice spoke from the passenger seat, her tone not at all approving of my lighthearted appeal for a place of the dead.

I winced, even as I kept my eyes on the road ahead of me. I had forgotten for a moment that we had passengers travelling with us to go hiking who were complete strangers to us.  How does one explain a fetish for graveyards to a person they had just met?  Things in the car had just become very, very awkward.

I blame my childhood. This was before my small town had internet and our TV had only one channel, CBC, so I had a lot of free time.  And I used that free time to read, voraciously.  I steadily made my way through my mom's bookshelves of the books she deemed fit for me to read so it was there that I stumbled upon a Canadian author known as L.M. Montgomery, known internationally for writing the Anne of Green Gables series.  She also wrote a trio of lesser-known books called The Emily of New Moon series.  If I had to point to the instigator for my love of graveyards those books would be the culprit.  In her stories L.M. Montgomery made graveyards out to be mystical storied places where one can reflect upon and celebrate the lives of the people who came before.  They were places for exploration, discovery and adventure - not merely places to mourn.

Even years after growing up, L.M. Montgomery's influence remains on my perspective.  Before I left to the East Coast I spent a few nights visiting my dad's grave on a mountain hillside where I sat on the grass and looked at the moon next to the plaque that held his name.  For me that wasn't a tortured place.  It was a peaceful place. The grass was soft, the air was warm, the breeze was cool, the hills were illuminated with the pale light of a full moon and I felt closer to my father just by being there, enjoying the wonderful moment in his presence.

I explained all this to the woman in the car, feeling for a moment like a graveyard evangelist.  I proclaimed that they can be places of story, history, discovery and celebration of the lives that have come before.  Likewise they can be places of peacefulness, rest, and yes tearful remembrance, but remembrance that can be flavoured with thankfulness for the lives that were.  It was actually very impressive that I was able to explain myself without stumbling awkwardly over my words and so I felt superlatively elated when she admitted that she could see my point.  Score one for positive graveyard indoctrination!

Something at the museum

Advertising is an amazing thing. There is the potential for something to exist your entire life right in front of you, but it's not until they put a bright flashy sign on it that you actually see it.  Take, for example, the Trail Museum. I grew up near Trail.  Lived there all my life. I could tell you all sorts of crazy facts about the area, like it is populated by Italians and their descendents, that its primary industry is smelting metals like lead, copper and zinc, and that the city was not subject to the Great Depression due to its vigorous growth in the 1930's. One thing that I have shockingly never known, however, was the fact that Trail had a museum. And it is open to the public. And it is free.

So you can imagine my surprise when I am driving down the highway into the heart of Downtown Trail and WHAM!  There it is on the side of the road in bright red and white letters "Museum Open FREE Admission." It was a revelation. Trail has a museum!!! Advertising has expanded my world.

Knowledge of a thing is worth nothing, however, if one is not able to make use of it, so last week I took advantage of a free afternoon to test out my free museum admission.  It was amazing. I learned things. I found crazy old mechanical calculators with so many buttons that I couldn't figure out how they worked and had to call over the museum attendant to give me a demonstration.  I found an old phonograph which plays cylindrical shaped records before they invented the disk shape ones.  I found out that there is actually a creek flowing through downtown Trail and the highway was built on top of it.  CRAZY!!!

And you know what the best thing about the museum experience was for me?
This sign:

 

Honestly, don't mind if I do!

Something priceless

 

This is an old-school Sony voice recorder machine.  I would call it vintage, except I did some research and found out that most old recorder machines are now rendered pretty much priceless, which is a euphemistic way of saying "worth nothing even if it still works".  Which sucks, because this one still works.  It belongs to my mother, and it belonged to her father before her.  It's sort of like a family heirloom, except not. 

Currently I have been trying to sell this voice recorder on the behalf of my mother, as she is trying to downsize and this particular model has been cluttering up our storage room for a coon's age, which is a hillbilly way of saying "a really, really long time."  The problem is that this particular model is unique.  That is, I can't find it anywhere on the internet, even EBay, so chances of it finding a warm and loving home are looking slim to none.

Which is why it is currently sitting in the garage sale pile.  And if no one claims it there, it will head towards the dump.  The stinky, heartless, lonely dump.  Does anyone out there have a heart and want a priceless unique vintage voice recorder?  I'm sure it has at least another coon's age left of life.