gwranda:

Bird pins (brooches) made out of scrap materials by Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II.

From The Art of Gaman: Arts & Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946 by Delphine Hirasuna (Ten Speed Press, 2005).

Gaman is a Japanese term of Zen Buddhist origin which means “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity”.

September Blog A Day

7. A story your family always tells about you:

– I have very few family, and those who are still around aren’t big talkers. I’m my own chronicler, it seems.    I asked C. if she can recall my parents or brother reciting any legends, and she couldn’t think of a thing, other than when asked about my childhood my mom would rave about what a good baby I was. 

“I would insist that you must have misbehaved occasionally, but she would maintain your innocence”.   

My brother was, according to her, “a real pill.”

September Blog A Day

6. How do you feel about sports? Did you play sports? Do you have any favorite teams?

-I’m not a rabid sports fan.  I enjoy watching games every once in a while.   I played tee-ball and baseball when I was a kid, and I still have this reverential fetish for old baseball gloves.  They’re a strange and beautiful object.

-Being a Canadian boy, hockey was a part of life. I was never great at it, and never got the hang of skating backwards. My cousins were very good players, and my uncle was a coach. They’d flood their back yard and make a rink. I’d go over there and play some shinny. Rough games.

The high school football coach, (who happened to be my geography teacher and a former CFL lineman) was always after me to move up and join the senior team. The biggest kid in school – I was 6′3″ and 285 lbs, he looked so deflated when I turned him down. By that time I had an afterschool job trying to make money for university and couldn’t stay for practice.

I cheer for the home team, except when they’re busy trying to hire sex offenders for the coaching staff.

September Blog A Day       

5. Do you have any framed photos or printed photographs in your home, car or work space? Tell us about them:

I have a bunch of framed photos of ancestors on the dining room wall, hung in a neat grid in matching frames. We’re actually thinking about taking those down and switching things up.  What I *should* talk about is the many pieces of framed art that cover every other wall.  They’re all works on paper. Stuff from local artists and friends.

I have a giant screen print of King Kong from the Alamo Drafthouse, and a large oil pastel my friend Clarence made of Hamilton’s industrial waterfront in winter-the least picturesque part of the city made beautiful. There’s the brass rubbing of a 15th century lady-in-waiting my mom did at a workshop once which is really cool.  I’ve got screen prints and Japanese prints, and some drawings I did of Union Station in Kansas City on a day that was so cold I almost froze my fingers.

In my room there is a little shelf over my dresser with drawings from tumblr artists I’ve collected or traded for over the years.  I’ve never regretted buying an original work of art.

In my car when you flip down the passenger side sun visor you find a small photo C. put there of Sally and Linus as kittens.