Aunt Leah's Circle of Friends Blues: Friday, May 9th!

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships. -Charles Simic, poet (b. 1938) 

P, Trust you are back safely to the Islay Inn and the tent city. Rumours of earthquakes in Mexico abound. Was that your parting shot?

I will have to pass on the ride this morning. I am into the banking and lawyering stage of this Galiano purchase. I also have an end of season Club Championship match at 1PM. I have the copy of Decoded (NRBC) here for you. We can arrange for delivery or pick up. Regards to Ski. W

Hi Lads and Lass!

Sorry I've not been in touch but on the Ski front, no word from her so not sure what she is planning. (Where are you SKI?) Complicated here as Coriandre has oodles of preparation for a Presbytery workshop domani so I will be taking The Brisbanites most of the day. If they are interested in riding I thought I might have Ski drive my car, with bikes, to UBC and I'd meet everyone there and we would tour campus that way. However, yet to be decided so I suppose I should let Raymondo tend his garden while Giorgio assumes the shackles off the landed gentry! Depending on what evolves, (Elly and Antonio are still abed.), I might pop by your respective residences to say hello. Don't worry about being there if other plans have you away. Just a thought as we are meandering anyway.

Buona Fortuna with Championship game, Whirlissimo, and thanks for NRBC book. We can work out pick-up details. I'm hoping to manage a ride tomorrow afternoon after I take E/T to Canada Place to board Alaska bound cruise ship. Must away as I've to put finishing touches to breakfast! Cheers, Patrizzio!

Pics: Antonio and Elly; pewter bowl and hootch scored from trip! Tony and Flamin' after a couple of bottles of Black Widow, (Note emblem on cap!), Pinot Gris!

P, just running out. Will leave book on the porch in case you drop by in my absence. W Pat, About to head off to the gym. Should be back before noon. Ray 

Hello family & friends:- In 20 days, officially May 29, 2014 and until further notice, we will be at our daughter's, Beth/ Terry Martyn. Email & Cells will be our mode of contact or Skype,
    
Busy with sorting & packing. Making slow progress. Trying to get rid of stuff so not so much to store for now. Trying to organize so easy to get at what we need for island trip in July and then south. This is the year we stay in Yuma over Christmas. maggie

Hi Maggie! Trust all goes as well as expected with sorting and packing! Tough job at the best of times!  Cheers, Patrizzio! Stats for today's ride:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/496300515#.U21s8rlaDNE.email

A Dram Come True
7:30pm-9:30pm, Friday, May 30, 2014
VIP Tasting 6:30pm-7:30pm
Hycroft University Women’s Club
1489 McRae Ave, Vancouver, BC

With only three weeks to go and over ¾ of our tickets sold, our anticipation for the tasty tipples at A Dram Come True continues to grow.

We can’t give away all our single malt surprises, but we do have a few tidbits we can share. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society will be back this year, with a brand new lineup of single cask whiskies (think “G4.2 Attractive spirit in a cloak of oak”). Each society bottling is unique and produced in a limited number—once it’s all been drunk, it’s gone for good—which makes their whisky incredibly rare. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s Outturn Tastings are usually member-only affairs, and we are thrilled to be able to offer you this privilege at our 12th annual A Dram Come True.

We are also pleased to announce that we’ll be featuring Kavalan Whisky from Taiwan. This incredible single malt is just entering the North American market, but it’s already been named “Best New World Whisky” by Jim Murray in his 2012 Bible. Kavalan also caused an international incident in the world of whisky when it beat traditional Scottish brands at a blind tasting held on Burns Night in 2010. You’ve got to try this amazing new single malt!

Please find attached an invitation to the Annual Basil Stuart-Stubbs Book Prize Reception on June 5. I hope you can join us. Sincerely, Ingrid T. Parent University Librarian 
 
Hi Tara! Corinne Durston and I are both delighted to attend the Reception on June 5th. Thanks and Cheers, Patrizzio! 

From Daily Rituals by Mason Currey. We sadly note the passing of the highly esteemed Maya Angelou, and include below her own description of her writing habits.

"Angelou has never been able to write at home. 'I try to keep home very pretty,' she has said, 'and I can't work in a pretty surrounding. It throws me.' As a result, she has always worked in hotel or motel rooms, the more anonymous the better. She described her routine in a 1983 interview:

' I usually get up at about 5:30, and I'm ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do my work -- a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it's going well, I'll stay as long as it's going well. It's lonely, and it's marvelous. I edit while I'm working. When I come home at 2, I read over what I've written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind. I shower, prepare dinner, so that when my husband comes home, I'm not totally absorbed in my work. 

We have a semblance of a normal life. We have a drink together and have dinner. Maybe after dinner I'll read to him what I've written that day. He doesn't comment. I don't invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes 1 hear the dissonance; then I try to straighten it out in the morning.'

"In this manner, Angelou has managed to write not only her acclaimed series of autobiographies but numerous poems, plays, lectures, articles, and television scripts. Sometimes the intensity of the work brings on strange physical reactions -- her back goes out, her knees swell, and her eyelids once swelled completely shut. Still, she enjoys pushing herself to the limits of her ability. 'I have always got to be the best,' she has said. 'I'm absolutely compulsive, I admit it. I don't see that's a negative.' " Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey, Alfred A. Knopf, 2013