Last week I tried using encaustic wax with stencils and got some mixed results. I like the two halves of this first piece, but they don’t really seem to work as a cohesive whole.

“Candy Jungle” by Catherine Raine, 2011

“Candy Jungle” by Catherine Raine, 2011

“Candy Jungle” by Catherine Raine, 2011

Today I got out the stencils and wax again, determined to keep it simple. I named the piece after my Grandma Raine because I think she would have liked it.

“Garden for Grandma Raine” by Catherine Raine, 2011

When I first posted a picture of “Mary’s Lost and Found,” I thought the piece was finished. However, the more I looked at it, something didn’t seem quite right. I was bothered by the heaviness of the fuzzy paper at the top.  Here’s the result of my revision efforts:

“Mary’s Lost and Found” by Catherine Raine, 2011

“Mary’s Lost and Found” by Catherine Raine, 2011

For comparative purposes, here’s the earlier version:

“Mary’s Lost and Found” by Catherine Raine, 2011

Due to a series of unfortunate transit events, I arrived late for this Black History Month event at Weston Library. When I came into the program room, a group of three adults and five children were watching an animated film called Mind Me Good Now! (2005) in attentive silence. I was soon absorbed in the story, which is based on a book by Caribbean writer Lynette Comissiong.

Even though Dalby and Tina’s mother warn them never to cross a certain footbridge that leads to a jungle path, Dalby disobeys and his older sister follows him. At the end of the path, he discovers an isolated hill with a tree on top that is also a house. Before Tina can stop him, he’s standing at the door of an evil tree-house.

A tall stranger in a long purple gown beckons the children inside, promising them food. She tells them she is Mama Zee but neglects to inform them that she is actually a cacoya (witch). The decor of her home provides some clues to her true profession: large bones serve as curtain rods and a skull rests on a shelf. Magic vines have tangled themselves around the door handles to prevent escape, and Tina soon realizes that she and her little brother are in the wicked clutches of a cacoya.

Mama Zee serves them bowls of green soup, and Dalby becomes sleepier and sleepier. Mama Zee begins a terrifying chant about the best way to cook little boys, but Tina interrupts her with a request, knowing that cacoyas are required to do anything a little girl asks. She says, “At home, me mommy always shells peas before I go to bed.” So Mama Zee obliges and shells a bowl of peas, assuming she can then resume her evil cooking preparations.

When the witch starts to reach for the sleeping Dalby, Tina quickly shakes her hair out of its braids and says that her mom always plaits her hair before bed. Mama Zee is more grudging this time, but she complies with the plaiting request. Then she turns her attention once more to Dalby, only to have Tina employ another delay tactic. She sends the cacoya out to fetch water with a non-watertight bucket. Mama Zee departs with obvious ill-grace and has a very frustrating time trying to collect water. When it all spills on her gown, she has a tantrum.

Mama Zee realizes she has bigger problems when she sees that it’s almost dawn. Too late. The sun comes out and she dissolves into a mere puff of ashes. The vine-locks on the door also disintegrate and Tina and Dalby are free. The film ends as they are reunited with their worried mother, who has come to fetch them.

After Mind Me Good Now! ended, storyteller and Children’s Services Specialist Laurel Taylor-Adams read from La Diablesse and the Baby by Richardo Keens-Douglas. In this story, a wise grandmother foils a diabolical visitor’s baby-stealing plans on a stormy night.

The glamorous stranger is dressed in a long blue gown which covers her feet. After gaining entrance to the grandmother’s house by appealing to her sympathy, the diablesse asks her reluctant hostess three times to hold the crying baby, but the child’s grandmother politely refuses. The stranger eventually goes away but leaves some evidence of her visit. In front of the house, the morning light reveals one muddy red human footprint and one muddy red hoof print!

Before she started reading, Ms. Taylor-Adams graciously invited me to move forward so I could see the pictures. From the front row, I was better able to admire her quietly dramatic storytelling style. I liked how she made whooshing sounds to imitate the wind and the rain, and she also sang the lullaby that the grandmother sang for her grandson. These details took us deeper into the world of the story. Later, Ms. Taylor-Adams told me that she’d been a children’s librarian for 30 years, which showed in her masterful ability to simultaneously read the text, show the pictures, and make eye contact with the audience.

The last story of the evening was a personal one about the facilitator’s own great uncle Bob. His boat, The Spanish Rose, mysteriously disappeared in a fog bank for two weeks in the Berumda Triangle. The biggest mystery of all was that the six men on the boat thought they’d only been in the fog bank for one day!

Even though I missed the first half of the program, I thoroughly enjoyed “Duppies, Jumbies, and Old Time Tales.” It seemed a shame that more people weren’t there to hear gifted storyteller Laurel Taylor-Adams and see Mind Me Good Now!

Don’t let Black History Month dissolve like Mama Zee before you take advantage of the many programs on offer at the Toronto Public Library! Mind your library blogger, now!

I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It groaned loudly from the Valentine’s Display in the lobby of Don Mills Library.

Why did the protagonist kiss a zombie? Why did she like it? And what steps do zombies take to keep their breath fresh?

After pondering the kissing habits of zombies, I entered the library and took a few moments to get a sense of the place. The first word that came into my head was “warehouse,” but then I reconsidered. Although the large square interior had something of the Costco nature, its decorations saved it from the box-store doldrums.

For instance, I never saw a Costco with an art exhibit. I studied the display of watercolours on the north wall by Fred Kormendi and thought about the recent information session for artists at Northern District Library. My favourite piece depicted two women smoking cigars. I also enjoyed reading about Kormendi, a Hungarian-Canadian artist who immigrated here in 1958 and returned to his beloved art in retirement.

Over in the Children’s Section on the west side of the library, an endearing bunny and elephant shared close quarters in a hot air balloon basket. And I loved the soaring kites in the rafters, perfect for such an expansive ceiling.

On my last visit in 2007, I had overlooked a wonderful story-telling stage and play area. The wooden walls created a distinctive space with an intention to nourish creativity and drama. Toys left behind on the carpeted steps testified to recent fun times.

The Young Adult wing on the opposite side of the library also did a great job of creating a sense of intentional space. Though lacking a garden view, it looked like the conservatory at my in-laws house in Scotland. Wall-to-floor windows on two sides suggested openness and relaxation.

After admiring the east wing, I trotted downstairs. There, I noticed a more seriously studious atmosphere, and the basement stacks reminded me of libraries I’ve visited at small liberal arts colleges in the Midwest. The lower level at Don Mills also offered an auditorium, a meeting room, a cubby hole study room, and an Adult Literacy Program room.

Returning to the upper level, I puzzled some fellow patrons by taking photographs of books. I especially wanted to get a picture of a “Quick Picks” bag because I’d never seen this innovative option at other TPL branches. The handy bag contained four books chosen by a librarian. With the injunction to “Grab a bag. Borrow them all!”, there need not be any more endless dithering among the shelves. The literary equivalent of picking up a pre-packed breakfast at a hotel, it was fun to investigate the contents of a bag that someone else had selected just for you.

As a district branch with a robust collection, Don Mills definitely spoiled its users for choice. For example, the large French collection yielded the following two books pictured below.

I discovered a petit vampire with a tail like a turnip root. Also, I learned that Hansel and Gretel are actually Jeannot and Margot in the French version of the fairy-tale.

In addition to the French language, Japanese and Chinese had large representation, and there were smaller collections of materials in German, Arabic, Spanish, Persian, and Hindi.

Indeed, Don Mills covered the gamut of the library experience from Art to Zombies!

The other evening I was marking a pile of 21 quizzes about sentence structure and I reached a point where I had to run upstairs and make a collage! I couldn’t face another quiz.

The icon figures come from a brochure I found about the Black Madonna. Other materials include handmade paper and wax. I was especially taken with the way the purple wax became blue-purple when it came into contact with the blue paper. Magic!

“Mary’s Lost and Found” by Catherine Raine, 2011

It was fun making “Mary’s Lost and Found”, and afterwards my brain felt refreshed enough to grade more quizzes.

When I started to circle the perimeter of Leaside Library, an ancient boulder stopped me in my tracks. According to a nearby sign, this “Precambrian erratic was slowly transported to the Leaside area by a glacier more than 10,000 years ago.” I loved the rock’s dignified presence, which was like a grandfather elephant resting after centuries of geological movement.

When I looked more closely at the cracks and patterns on the erratic, I found one that looked like a giraffe. Even though I’m sure it has survived worse, I was disappointed to see dried splashes of dog pee on the boulder. Surely, no creature can truly mark something that has been here for ten thousand years.

Next, I trotted along a boot-made trail in the snow and took in Leaside Tennis Club and Traces Mane Park before ducking into the warm library.

As I was getting my bearings in the lobby, a group of pre-school kids trooped through the door in a jolly burst of noise and colourful hats. Their teachers ushered them into the program room to the right of the entrance, where a sliding door created a separate space for the duration of the program. Later, I noted the expansive south window that suffused the place with pure winter light. I also liked the clever storage area for flat cushions in primary colours. (When I was in Brownies, we called them “sit-upons” but I’m not sure if they’re called that in Canada).

The rest of Leaside’s interior was pleasingly rectangular. I loved the high windows on three sides, especially in the places where dark tree branches held steady behind the panes.

Most of the space was open plan, with the Children’s Room demarcated by a portal that contained display cabinets on either side. A bank of computers formed most of the outer barrier of the kids’ zone, with a gap serving as a second entrance before a row of shelves continued to maintain the low wall started by the computer bank.

Serving as friendly guardians of the cabinet-entrance were a collection of snowpeople. They seemed to be a sporty bunch, for they had sleds and skis in addition to relevant winter-themed literature such as Omar On Ice.

On the other side of the wall, I discovered some welcoming armchairs, a deer wearing a long stocking cap, and a delightful window seat. I was very taken by one of the display books, The Cow Who Clucked. Who says a cow has to moo all day long? Why not cluck instead?

As I continued my self-guided tour, I found the French collection and more window seats. A patron was seated on one of them with her laptop. She had set her galoshes carefully to one side and was typing in her stockinged feet.

The north window bank also had its fans, as did the local history room near the checkout desk. When I poked about inside the Leaside Room, I discovered a signed copy of Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss and a framed example of Mayoral neck bling with lots of gold maple leaves clasped together.

Thank you, Leaside, for your distinctive boulder, contented snowmen, friendly staff, and classy decor!