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The trip to Van was wonderful -- we were blessed with fine weather every day -- LCP Conf/Fest was highly enjoyable too, and made a number of interesting poetic contacts and discoveries. Nevertheless, the meeting with my uncle was the highlight. Still spry and lucid at nearly a hundred -- he'll be reaching his centenary in a couple of months -- he's a walking oral history. Filled me in on all kinds of details of our family past, plus vivid recollections of what it was like to be a Nova Scotia coal miner back in the '20s, and even the Halifax Explosion, as experienced 60 km away on a farm near East Mines, NS.

On my last day, though, I felt a sore throat coming on, and on the plane back the congestion started -- which lead, it seems, to a classic case of barotrauma -- otherwise known as airplane ear -- when the plane made an unusually fast descent. A week later, my ears are still blocked. The cold became a nasty one; I'm still not over it. Still, with end of school stuff and other matters, I was surprised to find today that I had scarcely looked at this blog in over two weeks. Ah well, things happen. Will post eventually.