Archives and old pictures...

[fajrdrako]

Today I was working with archive material at the Ottawa Little Theatre - people's old scrapbooks and clippings and photos and letters and so on. Some of it was fascinating, some irrelevant, and some trivial. Sometimes it was fun reading news items on the back of clippings. For example, from The Ottawa Journal on Monday, November 18, 1968 - exactly forty years ago:

RARE MURDER REPORTED

LONDON (Reuters) - An 80-year-old spinster was found beaten to death Sunday in the first murder on the Scottish island of Lewis in more than 100 years.

That's the whole item. I wonder what the story was? Did they catch the killer? Have there been murders on Lewis since?

One person had made a collection of clippings of newspaper reports about the huge snowfall we had in the winter of 1971, setting records. I was amused by this aerial photo of Parliament Hill:



The caption read:

Parliament Truce Ahead?

Will the Conservatives and the Liberals bury the hatchet for a while, in the wake of Ottawa's record-breaking snowfall this week? Perhaps the prospect was on the mind of whoever took considerable pains to stamp out this near geometrically-perfect peace symbol in the virgin snow of Parliament Hill's east lawn Wednesday. RCMP, who have seen other peace symbols, "Joyeux Noel," and "Merry Christmas" all stamped out earlier this year, said as far as they knew no ropes or other equipment were used to carry out the stamping of the symbol. (Journal photo by Dominion Wide)
- The Ottawa Journal, Thursday, Feb. 25, 1971

I found programs from the Ottawa Repertory Theatre, with William Shatner in the cast. And Pete Seeger gave a concert in Ottawa in 1958 - who knew?

Comments

[adnamamai.livejournal.com]

Wow! Cool!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It's fun - I don't know from one clipping to the next what I'm going to find.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

I do love a whimsical pacifist.

And Pete Seeger... ah!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It's fun to get this glimpse into the not-so-distant past.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

It is, but for me it's always difficult. Rewarding, and cherished, but very hard to do, and emotionally wrenching. This is my much-mentioned, occasionally-laughed-at processing delay in action: I cannot go back through experiences until I have dealt with them fully for the first time... which I mean literally. I take in full, eidetic "memories" ("experiences", I would actually say, but I think "memories" might say it in a better way for you?) and then I keep functioning in the current-time experiences of a typical day, and can go back to the stored eidetic experiences only when I have a chance to be left alone (no additional sensory stimulation coming in -- say, quiet sofa at the end of the day). And that is when I start to understand what I experienced. Until then, it has not entered my soul, yet, it is just in my working memory, my superficial memory, basically what I am now recognizing is my verbal memory.

This is why I had not yet been able to go through that box of stuff from your 1997 move that Harry had been holding for me. I had not abandoned it. Not even close. I just was not able to go into it yet. Just wanted to explain that. And I'm not going to use "processing delay" for a cheap laugh ever again, mark my words....

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Do you ever catch up with yourself? Not a frivolous question: just curious.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Hardly ever.

(I know it wasn't a frivolous question.)

But I am learning about how this all works, and learning about how I can function within it in the best ways. I wish I could talk with you about that.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I too am working on finding my own pace and patterns.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

We are all somewhere along the spectrum of human neurological variation... and one of the things I admire most about you, and find most endearing, is your awareness of this and acceptance of it. (OK, feel free to blush [g].)

Irony: The cover of the latest Advocate magazine says: Gay Is The New Black: the last great civil rights conflict. Or something like that. I found it annoying, but only because I'm in that minority as well as in the minority (still very invisible and ignorable, as gay once was [and was insisted upon being!]) of atypical abilities. The "disability rights" movement is one of the last great civil rights fights. I won't get arrogant and say it is THE last, as I'm sure there are other now-hidden areas of bigotry that possibly even the bigoted ones are not conscious of.

Anyway. Image of the bush filled with ripe blueberries, and you are right in the middle of it unable to move in any direction because you want ALL of the blueberries in your mouth RIGHT NOW and -- frozen. That's me, awash in nonverbal thought, unable to start a spoken sentence. If a metaphor works, I'll use it! xo

Another irony: the system doesn't think I'm real, so it gave me a "type this" thing right below this. Thank god, this time it's legible to me!!!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the legibility!

I haven't seen an issue of the Advocate for ages. I haven't even been going in to magazine stores because I know they'll tempt me and I can't afford them. I'm tempted by the December Doctor Who magazine, though!