Ian LeTourneau

Here’s a photo of Sherry receiving her medallion and cheque from His Honour, The Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Norman Kwong, at the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Awards today in Edmonton.

Couldn’t resist taking this photo, as Wyatt all on his own, climbed into the chair and picked up the newspaper. Too cute!

Yeah, that’s right. Tomorrow I will be dining with His Honour, Lt. Gov. Norman Kwong, at a luncheon in Edmonton. My wife, Sherry Coffey, won an Emerging Artist Award. She will receive a medallion and a cheque for $10,000. Pictures, if we can manage to find batteries for the camera, to follow tomorrow.

I haven’t had access for a few days due to some kind of corrupt plug-in. I’m not sure what that means, but for some reason it makes me think of the Conservative Party. Vote ABC!

The last week’s been pretty busy. On Sunday I went to see Garnet Rogers play. He ended his performance with two songs, one about memories touring with his brother and driving across Canada and the other a version of “Northwest Passage,” his brother’s famous song. It was a moving end to a night of some really great tunes.

The night after that I went to the all-candidates meeting. The night was organized by topic and the last one was arts. I waited all night to ask a question. For the previous topics, there was a opening scripted question and then the audience got their turn. As soon as the last candidate answered I put my hand up. Then the chair said, “that’s it for the night” and asked for closing remarks. So I decided to go ask the candidates afterwards what their position on the arts were. Furthermore, I decided to ask our incumbent MP Brian Jean first, since he may end up representing me again. It would have been better to beat my head against the wall. Anyway, I told him my concerns and that he’d see me again. I won’t be voting for him, but he did seem like a genuine, hard-working kind of MP.

Then Wednesday Wyatt came home with an infected eye. We took him to the doctor and he stayed home from daycare for the rest of the week. Here is a picture of him after his haircut today.

I went out to the grocery store earlier this evening and when I came home, Wyatt was pretty excited and he was telling me about a “Kye-ya. Coat-aye.” Then Sherry showed me the photo of what they saw in the backyard.

If you’re in Edmonton or Athabasca this weekend, I’m reading at Audrey’s at 2pm on Sunday and at the Athabasca Multiplex at 7pm. See you there!

Wyatt turns 2 today!
Here he is this morning on his new tricycle from his grammy and grampie from New Brunswick.

A few weeks ago I clicked on an ad on Bookninja and asked for a free copy of a new book from Simon & Schuster. I mean, a free book is music to my ears. (Yes, I’m mixing my metaphors, but it’s my blog, ain’t it?) It arrived today. I had forgotten completely about it. The Night of the Gun by David Carr. When I get around to reading it, I will probably write about it here, which is exactly what S&S wants me to do, so all you 3 or 4 people who read this blog will go out and buy it.

Anyway, this past weekend I attended the Athabasca University’s Learning Services Conference. This is the department I belong to, and I actually get paid to attend! A $200 stipend courtesy of my union, CUPE. There were some interesting sessions, but I mainly went to actually meet colleagues. When you work distance ed, you sometimes never meet these people. For instance, I finally met my supervisor, who has been in that role for about a year now. Friday night of the conference I attended a powerful talk by Andrew Nikiforuk. Afterwards I gave him one of my bookmarks and told him about my book. I figured he might like and appreciate it, since some of the themes in my book and his talk were the same. He said he’d “look it up.” On the way to Edmonton that day, I stopped and purchased, with the proceeds of my book sales so far, a copy of the 2nd edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary and Tim Lilburn’s new book of essays.

Saturday morning we went to the Strathcona Market and then the Edmonton Pubic Library, where there was a massive book sale going on. I bought almost a dozen books–a bio of Auden, 6 or 7 poetry volumes, several poetry studies, and a novel or two–and Sherry bought some books, and we got Wyatt about 10 books for his birthday coming up. Total cost: $37. Very nice.

So I have some reading to do. And I don’t think The Night of the Gun is anywhere on the top. Sorry S&S, I’ll get to it someday. I already started with Lilburn and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

Adrienne sent some photos today. Here are the four stars from the New Leaf Series Launch signing our books.

(Seated from left to right: Kelly-Anne Riess, moi, Taylor Leedhal, Adrienne Gruber)

Some deer stopped by this evening to grab a bite from what’s left of our garden.

Deer #1, just below out kitchen window.

Deer #2, looking a little annoyed that I opened the door to get a picture!

Arrived home at about 8:30 last night. Loooooong day of driving. Wyatt is feeling a lot better now, too. Here’s a picture from the launch.

The launch went very well last night. Some reports had the attendance at 175 people. There was standing room only. I think Thistledown did well with book sales.

I read fourth and during one of my poems, the one about Wyatt, he said “daddy” exactly after I had read the line about practicing his syllables. It was perfect timing, and it was all the talk afterwards. Then by the end of the poem, he threw up, but he seems to be ok. Just a bit of a fever.