Stanely Park and other losses

This may not be the type of blog that can easily be referenced or linked, or whatever the right term is, but, this year anyway, it's serving as a good record of climate change on the east and west coasts. Must indeed be strange to be walking around in shirtsleeves in January, and even uncomfortable, given your feelings about NYC in the summer. Here we've moved on from the wind and rain, to snow and ice. Because of our varied topography, the weather hits different elevations, etc, differently. Last Wednesday's snowstorm closed the College, for example, so many accidents virtually just outside the doors of the place that people were trapped in the underground parking lot, had to abandon their cars and get home some other way, or spend the night in local hotels. But in downtown Vancouver, which I reached by Skytrain easily enough, snow had been light and didn't prevent me from taking a friend to see a play for her birthday. Later that night the temperature dropped and it has remained below freezing for several days now. But it's sunny! We've had a couple of full days of sunshine!
   I'm looking forward to your comments on the book you're reading, The Singularity is Near.  Good that someone is tracking positive changes, as I think he must be to come up with a hopeful outcome of the technological changes that may be causing climatic havoc as well as ease in electronic communication.  So I'll wait for that, and also more images from your camera and your brush. Did the NYC skyline painting sell on e-Bay? I forgot to check.
   Sorry about the troubles in California, and the sickness that followed your trip there.  So many of my friends are dealing with aged parents. I just got off he phone with one friend whose mother died last week. Mine both died in their early 70's; Dad in the early 80's, Mom in 1990, which means I don't have the burden of caring for them now, but have missed their presence in the world for some time. If genetics are everything, I should hurry to complete the work I want to do, for only my paternal grandmother lived past 80.
   That reality actually does lend some urgency to my plans, but not so much that I haven't been progressing very slowly on the new play idea. This week I hope to do some interviewing and watch some old film about the place I'll be basing the play on, the former school for what are now called developmentally disabled people. It's going to be a challenge. Classes started, and I the initial impression of my students in play writing and fiction writing is good. This is the honeymoon period, before assignments come in. Sounds like you've set yourself a demanding task, at your job. But your bosses must be impressed with your creativity and ingenuity. Could you send me an example, so that I know what the pieces look like?
   One subject that could have relevance for blog readers other than ourselves is Stanley Park. I don't think you ever visited it, but you may have seen its green elbow sticking out when you passed on the ship. Or maybe not. But it has been the centre of the city much the way Central Park is the centre of Manhattan. The wind storms hit the park head on, from the west, and the first storm knocked over an estimated three thousand trees, some of them old growth cedar, fir and hemlock. Subsequent storms continued pounding the more vulnerable areas and we've now lost so many trees, particularly on the west side, that people say it looks like a clearcut. A local news station has been taking donations towards park restoration, not that money can make trees grow faster. But the seawall that runs right around the park was damaged, too, and that can be repaired for the thousands of walkers, runners and cyclists who use it on a regular basis. The causeway to the Lions Gate Bridge runs right through a section of the park and had to be closed three separate days to allow Park crews to clear fallen trees off the road after various storms had moved through. Some trees have been completely uprooted, others broken off and looking as if someone snapped their trunks, leaving a jagged break line, much as you'd see if you snapped a toothpick or a chopstick. Homeless people camp out in the Park, and luckily none of them were hurt, though it had to be pretty scary to be inside the forst among all the crashing trees. One fellow was trapped, and it was only because his cancelled cell phone still had enough juice to get him to the 911 operator that he could be rescued, by a policeman on horseback!