I don’t do warnings on this blog very often but I know the photo shows a dead animal and so may bother some people.
You’ve been warned.
So anyhow, we went out to Weyburn all day yesterday. Last fall, we applied for and received a transfer to a new seasonal campsite – bigger, closer to Shea’s parents’ site, more trees – so had to spend a busy day moving all the stuff we’d left at our old site – shed, content, decks, etc. – to our new site.
I’d seen some deer in the ditch on the drive down which always gives me pause (knock on wood – I’ve never hit a deer in years of Saskatchewan driving at all hours of the day and along highways and back roads!) but it was a much smaller critter that I hit on the way back when a partridge flew out of the ditch in front of our vehicle a few miles outside of Regina.
When I looked in the rearview mirror, I didn’t see it on the road but just assumed it had bounced off to the side or whatever and carried on home, forgetting about it…
…at least until we got to our driveway and we found that the bird hadn’t cleared the vehicle at all but had instead, ended up embedded in our van’s grille!
The worst/funniest part – we had actually gone through a drive-thru to pick up fried chicken when we got to the city which means we went through a drive-thru with a bird driven-thru our grille! 😮
This had been a shitty year for me, even before the COVID pandemic hit.
Coteau Books, which was a long-standing literary press in Canada for nearly half a century, and which I’d served on the board of directors of for nearly a decade, entered bankruptcy protection in late February.
I’ll likely do a longer post about some of what happened at Coteau at some point far far down the road.
But the main thing to mention, at least from my perspective as someone who was at the table as the entire situation developed, is that this bankruptcy happened due to a long series of unfortunate events, some within board control but many beyond our control; it was not the fault of any one individual or any one decision; and it was reflective of numerous arts and/or book-related organizations that have gone through similar financial difficulties in Saskatchewan and across Canada in the past but which almost always manage to pull out of the nose dive – something Coteau simply wasn’t able to do in the end despite incredible efforts of many involved.
I guess the other thing to note is this isn’t a convenience store or a clothing store going bankrupt – this is a part of Saskatchewan’s cultural fabric gone. I was as excited for some of our upcoming titles for this fall as I was for any Coteau had *ever* released and I only hope most of them can find new homes with other publishers.
Anyhow, one of the steps in this bankruptcy process is to have an auction of Coteau’s assets including computers, office equipment and a ton (literally!) of books.
Shea and I have tried to do regular video chats with various friends and family throughout this pandemic but last night, we decided to do something a bit different – instead of a sustained conversation with one person or group, we decided to try “chat roulette” where we’d message random people on our Facebook friend list to see if they could have a quick chat.
That’s how we ended up randomly chatting with one of the coolest people I met during my England Exchange in 1995. In the pre-social media days, I lost track of him but eventually found him by reaching out to the alumni association of his college.
We caught up by email but it never occurred to me to do a video chat – until last night. He said he was disappointed as his wife and kids were around last night but he was home alone but we still had a great time catching up, comparing notes on Living La Vida Covida, and reminiscing about our England adventures.
One small thing I hope Covid does is remind us how connected the world is and how easy it is to stay in contact with people we might not otherwise.
