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September 13, 2007
there once was a teacher of great renown
Tonight we attended an opening/auction at the Lebel Gallery in honour of my former professor and beloved mentor, Daniel W. Dingler, who has retired after thirty years of teaching lithography and drawing at the University of Windsor. This event is the reason I flew home this weekend. It was wonderful to see Daniel and his wife Susan again after too long. It's really only been recently that I've begun to realize just how much I've been influenced by Daniel, and how much of his personality and his classroom manner I've absorbed; I often find myself saying things to my students that sound so much like him that they take me aback. Daniel was a wonderful teacher, an unflagging supporter and a great friend, and it's one of my greatest hopes that there will be students for whom I can fill that role, and fill it as well as he did for me.
From the looks of this photo, Daniel and I even make the same funny face:
(all photos in this post courtesy of Peter Zimmerman)
Before leaving the art building I was able to pay an all-too-brief visit to my dear, cherished Griffin press. All y'all printmakers out there* might think that Takach is the shit, but I'm here to tell you that my precious Griffin is worth twenty of those pieces of crap.
We had to have a moment alone. . .
And look! That's my tabouret!
*just keeping the dialect police on their toes, eh.
Posted by jodi at 10:22 PM | Comments (6) | categories: school : sugar shock : windsor
August 17, 2006
Dave and Max, 1981
This sweet little boy is 31 today. You can tell by the expression what a torment he was back then, so easily fooling grownups into believing he was the angelic darling, all the while egging on his (somewhat less angelic) big sister into catching the shit for every misdeed (by the way Mom, it was DAVE who coloured the entire basement wall pink that time. I swear it was him).
Love you, bro. And I'll forgive you for bloodying my nose if you'll forgive me for smashing your video game.
Posted by jodi at 07:07 AM | Comments (3) | categories: sugar shock
May 31, 2006
greetings, baby Nathaniel
Welcome to life on the outside. I can't wait to meet you this weekend.
Posted by jodi at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | categories: sugar shock
April 09, 2006
He's got a chain of flowers, and sows a bird in her knickers
I'm not going to get all embarrassingly saccharine today, because that's just so last year. Today the person I love more than anything is 40 years old. I'll save the truly sentimental dreck for when he turns 80, because by then I'll be so old that sentimentality will be forgivable and perhaps even expected, and he'll be too demented to read it and get embarrassed by it anyway.
The birthday party? One word sums it up:
*edited to clarify: the etch-a-sketch drawing was done by our brother in law Rod Keith, not by me. I'm not nearly so amazingly talented; I can draw stairs and that's about it.
Posted by jodi at 09:05 PM | Comments (17) | categories: sugar shock
April 03, 2006
Happy, happy day
Not much time to write today, but get on over and do some lovin' on Rachael and Lala, because they're getting married today! Hooray for love, and hooray for Canada! I wish you guys all the best, and I hope with all my heart that some day you'll be able to be married in your own country, too.
And tomorrow I'm going to be in Canada too, with my own beloved. Hooray for love. Hooray for Canada. Did I say that already?
Posted by jodi at 08:48 AM | Comments (4) | categories: sugar shock
August 17, 2005
Thirty years ago today. . .
Photo: flairphoto.ca
Thirty years ago yesterday, I was shipped off to Uncle Delmar and Aunt Maxine's farm to stay for a few days while my mom went to the hospital in London to have a baby.
My memory of events that day is hazy. At 3 and a half, I think my reputation as a badass must have been already well established. My cousins and I were pretty much allowed to run around by ourselves on the property, including inside the pig barn. The only thing Uncle Delmar warned me about was not to go out the back door of the barn. Now that I think of it, perhaps my reputation as a badass was actually not all that solidified yet, otherwise he might have just tied me to the tree in the yard instead. Because, hello. Of course as soon as his back was turned I was out that door.
And up past my arse in pig shit.
Now that I think of it, it must not have been all that deep. I was pretty little, and it's not like it went all the way up to my armpits or anything. But in my mind I can see an endless mire of swirling, seething brown muck, bubbles popping on the surface, belching a great piggy stench. Kind of like the quicksand on Gilligan's Island, only stinkier. Since I hadn't brought enough clothes to afford to mess any up, I had to wear my cousin Chris's too-big trousers for the rest of my visit.
Thirty years ago tomorrow, when I finally got to go home, there was a beautiful new baby brother waiting for me. He was sweet-tempered and angelic, not at all crazy or high-strung or belligerent, like someone else we know. I never got to be the centre of attention again (and haven't gotten over it yet, can you tell?).
Happy birthday, Dave. You're one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
Posted by jodi at 12:00 PM | Comments (8) | categories: sugar shock
April 09, 2005
Watch out, I may get sentimental here
Today my beloved turns 39.
I've known Peter for more than twelve years now, and loved him for most of them. Our relationship was pretty turbulent for the first five years or so, but now we've settled into a boring old-couple groove.
I used to live in a tiny apartment on the second floor of a 1 1/2 storey house in London. All the ceilings were low and sloped, and my bedroom was a little dormer walk-in closet with a window at one end, just wide enough to slide a three-quarter mattress in so that the bed had a wall on either side. We would spend long summer afternoons making love in that hot little room, sweating like crazy and then opening the window afterward to let the breeze chill our wet skin. And then we would lie there and talk, for hours. About art, politics, physics, the Russian revolution, life, the universe, and everything. Peter was just starting his masters degree then, and I was working part time, so we had a lot of free time on our hands. I sometimes wish that he could be unemployed for a little while so we could live like that again.
I believed everything Peter told me back then, something that he took advantage of more than I knew. Now I'm a little better at figuring out when he's shitting me, but he still fools me fairly often.
Some reasons why I love Peter:
He never, ever places my needs before those of his children. I know it breaks his heart that we live in a different town than them now and he doesn't get to see them as often, but he still manages to be a better parent than some people I have known who live with their kids.
He is the most beautiful man I have ever seen. I guess it's my love of figure drawing that makes me such a sucker for the subtle little contours of the human body, but sometimes the angle of his jaw or the bones in his wrist take my breath away. And he has the craziest legs, sculpted by fifteen years of ball hockey.
He has grandiose, creative ideas, but unlike me, he doesn't start working on all of them at once and then poop out. He just does things, or doesn't.
He is sensitive to my many neuroses. He makes himself huge bowls of tuna salad and has it for lunch almost every day, but he always washes all the utensils right away so that I don't have to be afraid of finding little bits of fish in the sink. And he doesn't make fun of me for being afraid of little bits of fish.
He has great taste in yarn. And if it bothers him that his birthday sweater looks like this today
he doesn't ride me too hard about it, because he knows what I'm like (I'm going to work on it today).
He puts up with the aggravation of living with my old, fat and extremely annoying cats, and doesn't resent them. He even loves them a little, which is more than I could have hoped for when we moved in together.
He is smarter than me.
He is totally supportive of my decision to go to the states for grad school, even though it means we'll be living in different countries for the next three years. He encouraged me to only apply to the best schools rather than sticking with the ones close to here.
He plays guitar and sings a lot, filling a void for me that was left when I moved out on my own and no longer had my dad and my brother making music around the house.
And, oh, about a million other reasons.
Happy birthday, Pete.
Posted by jodi at 12:04 PM | Comments (11) | categories: sugar shock
December 14, 2004
Happy birthday to Rob
Here is a picture of me with my dear friend Rob, waaaaay back
before we both gave up the dorky clothes and chopped off all
that hair. I had a major crush on him back then. (can you blame
me? look at those legs!)
Ten things about Rob:
1. Rob turns 35 today. Our birthdays are two years and two days apart. When he turned 31 and I turned 29, we had a "Rob and Jodi are 30" party on the day between our birthdays. So tomorrow, Rob and Jodi are 34!
2. Our cats are sisters, born 11 years ago in my bed. He's got the pretty sister, I've got the dumpy one.
3. Rob makes all the girls tremble and the boys swoon.
4. No matter what kind of grotty apartment he's living in, Rob always manages to have the classiest bachelor pad going.
5. Rob is the kind of friend who will steal seeds from other people's gardens and send them to you in the mail.
6. Rob learned to knit socks because I was into knitting socks. His first socks were purple, and way too big.
7. When I tried to learn to dance because he dances, he never gave up trying to teach me, even though it's hopeless.
8. A pink velvet doublet becomes him like no other.
9. Rob is one of the kindest, most generous and most beautiful people I know.
10. I still have a crush on him.
Posted by jodi at 08:23 AM | Comments (3) | categories: sugar shock