by Marja-Leena 
Continuing to show off some of my favourite photos from our recent visit to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum here in Vancouver, BC. I think the first photo is of the skull of a walrus and third one a giraffe skull from Uganda.
Please check out the earlier and later posts, if you haven’t already:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7
by Marja-Leena 
illustration by Natalie d’Arbeloff, from chapter 4, La Vie en Rosé, used with her permission
I love the way a story builds up in a serial novel or sequel format à la Dickens. It is a clever format for building up anticipation, yet definitely tries my patience as I eagerly await each new episode. I particularly recall in my silly teenage years reading serials in some monthly magazines, waiting weeks between issues – a clever way also for publishers to keep up sales and deplete my meager allowance. One summer vacation at the cottage, I found a stack of very old yellowed Finnish newspapers with a romantic serial novel in it and that was heaven without the wait!
I’m sure most of my readers need no introduction to my friend, the artist, writer, long-time blogger, Natalie d’Arbeloff of Blaugustine fame. If you don’t know her, I suggest you visit her now and read one of her latest creative ventures, the serial story La Vie en Rosé (and it’s free). There are already sixteen chapters to savour. Like many good tales, it has an intriguing true story within the story, interesting characters and a bit of French. The illustrations are very much “Natalie” yet unlike the graphic novels that she is well-known for.
Here are two excerpts, the first her introduction to how it all began:
The first installment of this story, posted on June 15, 2009 on Blaugustine, was my 250 word contribution to an online game of Consequences (each successive entry in the game began with the closing lines of its predecessor). But because some readers encouraged me to continue where I left off, somehow it just grew and became this illustrated story, which will finish whenever it finishes. New installments are added in consecutive order whenever I write a new one. Your patience is appreciated.
Then a passage from Chapter 13 which particularly had me smiling:
Susan closed her notebook and took a deep breath. The words tumbled out like marbles scattering haphazardly all over the table. She spoke too loud, too fast and too intensely. The important thing was to get through.
“After I saw your garden you know Père Lafitte I went home and looked up the postman Cheval and something changed something happened I don’t know I started walking every day the roads around here have you seen the rubbish at the side of the roads all the plastic bottles and everything I counted them I made notes you know when I was a child an only child we went to the beach and I’d take my little spade and I’d be building sand things all day long not castles just small houses with big windows and gardens once I won a prize for my sand house you know if that postman was alive today maybe he’d be picking up rubbish instead of stones along the country roads to build his Palais Idéal that’s what I was thinking and Père Lafitte listen it’s not impossible in Los Angeles a man called Rodia built amazing towers out of broken glass all by himself like Cheval and I was thinking maybe I mean why not I could collect the stuff in my car the plastic bottles especially it wouldn’t take that long and I’d bring them to your garden and then we could I mean you could and I’d help you build something you know maybe some kind of chapel and it would always be there I can see it in my mind I’ve been dreaming about it remember when you told me about doing something extraordinary comme ça for no reason Père Lafitte something just clicked then like I’ve always known it but never heard it expressed before so what do you say ?”
Do leave a note for Natalie, she loves to hear from readers. (And tell her from me to hurry up with the next episodes.)
by Marja-Leena 
Moving along in the Beaty to look at the specimens in the glazed display cases, still in the Atrium and below the Blue Whale, I was immediately enthralled by the gorgeous skulls of many creatures. I’m sorry I don’t have the proper names for the specimens to give you here as I tended to be more attracted by their diversity and the beauty of their textures, shapes and colours in what I chose to photograph than to make this a scientific record. It was too time-consuming and complicated for me to make a textual record of every image.
In fact my husband said when he saw me eagerly pull out the camera again, “Now I’ll never get you out of here!” I think we were both reminded of our long ago visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta where I went so camera happy, especially over the fossils. That amazing place was the source of many photos (pre-digital), some of which ended up in my printworks.
Maybe some details from this Beaty experience will also become part of future work too while they sit in my image library waiting for that right moment of inspiration and connection. In the meantime, they have provided inspiration in continuing thoughts about biodiversity and loss, as well as great blogging material.
I might have taken far more images but was often frustrated by the challenges of too many reflections on the glass fronts or tops, especially in the areas away from the Atrium. However, in the top photo, I was intrigued by a happy reflection of the Blue Whale’s tail and the trees outside, so chose not to crop them out. More to come – are you getting bored yet?
by Marja-Leena 
Here are some closer detail shots of the massive Blue Whale at the Beaty that I could not resist sharing. Looking at the image of the bones in a human hand, isn’t it astonishing how similar they are to the bones of the whale flipper?
In case you missed it, please read the previous post in this short series about the Beaty Biodiversity Museum that so enthralled us on our first visit there. Don’t miss the informative and interesting slide shows and videos.
by Marja-Leena 
One day last week, we made our first visit to Vancouver’s new Beaty Biodiversity Museum, located on the campus of the University of British Columbia (UBC). A teaching and research facility, the museum is now able to showcase UBC’s natural history collections, with more than two million specimens to the public for the first time.
Among the treasures are a 26-metre-long blue whale skeleton suspended in the two-storey glass Atrium, the second-largest fish collection in the nation, and myriad fossils, shells, insects, fungi, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and plants from around British Columbia and the world.
The Blue Whale Exhibit is truly magnificent and stunning as the first thing one sees already from the outside and when walking into the atrium. I didn’t, for example, know that:
Blue whales are the biggest animals that have ever lived on earth–longer than the longest known dinosaur, and much more massive.
The Blue Whale story is awe-inspiring:
On the remote northwestern coast of PEI [Prince Edward Island, a small island province in eastern Canada] in 1987, a 26 m long mature female blue whale died and washed ashore near the town of Tignish. In hopes of preserving the whale’s skeleton for research or museum display, the PEI government and the Canadian Museum of Nature arranged for the skeleton to be dragged off the beach near Nail Pond, and buried. The remains of the whale were longer than two Vancouver trolley buses parked one behind the other, and weighed an estimated 80,000 kg. Her burial was a mammoth task.
Because of the difficulty of unearthing and displaying such a large animal, the whale skeleton remained under the red PEI dirt for two decades. In 2007, the Museum of Nature and the PEI government granted UBC permission to retrieve the whale, and bring it to BC to be displayed in the new Beaty Biodiversity Museum.
Moving the skeleton from the coast of PEI to the inside of the Museum’s glass atrium, 6000 km away, [was] a challenging project…
Blue whales are the largest animal ever to have lived on earth. They rarely strand on beaches, and very few skeletons have been recovered for research or display. Worldwide, only 20 are available to the public for viewing.
We learned much from the guide and the posted displays, such as the fact that the whale was killed by a passing ship, how they had to rebuild and put together the huge bones of the skeleton, and that they are on the Red List of Endangered Species. Fortunately the Beaty’s website has excellent videos on the project to learn more, so if you are interested, do check them out at the links. Enjoy!
Continued: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.
by Marja-Leena 
More lichen studies at the scanner (see previous post and comments).
A few days ago, I received my copies of MERCY ISLAND by Ren Powell and I’ve been dipping into the poems at random, allowing a slow digestion of the remarkably rich imagery that Ren Powell evokes with spare words. Today, as I’m composing this blog entry, I enjoyed a review of the book by poet and blogger Rachel Barenblat of The Velveteen Rabbi. The synchronicity in the following lines struck me:
Sacred painting’s
yellow ochre
my skirt
trimmed with lichen
From Ren’s poem A View from an Island. (Please read the whole poem at Rachel’s). I personally like to think it’s of Hornby Island, off the BC coast, since my photo on the cover is taken on one of its shores.
Update: March 31st, 2011: Another most interestingly written review including some gratifying comments about the cover by Carolee Sherwood. Thanks for sending it to me, Beth!
by Marja-Leena 
Last Saturday night turned clear so were fortunate to be able to watch the supermoon’s rise but were not so impressed with it, for we’ve seen better, August moons for example, though it looked pretty reflected on the sea.
Sunday and the spring equinox was glorious with clear blue skies and warming sunshine, so rare, so missed and impossible to resist. Birds entertained us with their singing above us in the trees while we worked most of the day in the garden, cleaning, pruning, spreading compost around the blueberry bushes, that sort of thing.
I even started some vegetable seeds at last. The solarium was very warm for them that day but unfortunately turned cold again that night and since. I keep moving the seed trays around inside the house trying to find a warm place for them. Snow still keeps coming down on the mountains, no worries about enough water for summer’s drought.
I found an intriguing twig under the magnolia tree and brought it in to scan later after finishing the garden chores. Today I’ve been having some fun with the images. Here are two for your enjoyment, more to come…
by Marja-Leena 
One rare and brilliant sunny day, ten days ago,
we came upon this proud ancient sentinel of the forest
