Louie and I drove to Osoyoos on Saturday in time for lunch with mom, Freddie and Wendy.  I’d spent the previous afternoon cooking and baking in preparation for the weekend.  I made meatballs and tomato sauce, candied almond and chocolate chunk cookies and a pumpkin loaf. 

On Saturday morning I quickly made the dough for buns and let it rise in the sun on the back seat as we drove.  I could tell the bowl was in the sun whenever a waft of yeast would hit my nose.  Initially I’d tried to turn my head every once in a while to see what was happening with the bowl, but as I knew that would likely lead to an accident, just using my nose was better.

My brother and sister in law’s girls, husbands and kids came on Saturday afternoon and the Schillerpalooza began in earnest.  We basically spent all weekend together either preparing or cleaning up after food, visiting and drinking quite a lot of wine and other spirits.

Nicky drove down and back for the day on Sunday for the turkey dinner, and so it was a great family event.  Luke’s stuck out at the rigs, but what can one do when the work’s there?

And speaking of ‘work’, last week’s third lesson of how to be a docent at the art gallery involved being toured around the new exhibit by the volunteer coordinator.  First we saw a video on what ‘art’ is, what it’s intended to do, and so on.  Then she showed us a collage and asked us questions about it to show us how she would do it with school kids.

She then took us into the main gallery which houses the exhibit we’ll be touring with school classes for the next three months.  As we walked in, we could see a large pile of sand with large shards of glass stuck into it.

There’s a screen behind that showing a continuous loop of the artist talking about time travel and worm holes.  In another area there are drawings of galaxies, some sculptures with Lego-like buildings on them, and large black and white etchings of apocalyptic-looking scenes.

When we returned to the classroom the coordinator turned to us and asked with excitement how we liked the exhibit.  The group silently sat there, and someone volunteered, “I don’t like it.”

A general discussion ensued, and then she asked me what I thought of the exhibit.  I had taken a course called the history of art at UBC years ago, and have been to enough art shows and Woody Allen movies to know what to do at this point.  I went on about the optimistic feeling I had from the galaxies amd worm holes and thought the whole exhibit denoted hope.

Haven’t I said many times before the most valuable class I ever took was drama while in high school?  Certainly it came in handy at that point.  Because to me, that’s not really what I like either, but whatever.

And there it is in microcosm.  Just like extended family, with art some of it’s hard to understand, and some is easy.