Winter Winning Winterset

Sitting and eating and drinking at the annual CAPE (Cultural Assistance Plan for Emergencies) fundraising dinner last night at the Ship Pub with friends and writers Janet McNaughton, (a prolific award-winning author of young adult novels), Libby Creelman (who has a terrific debut novel just out), poet Shoshanna Wingate, and recent award winner Kathleen Winter.

from CBC website:

Kathleen has won Newfoundland and Labrador's richest literary prize, for the second win in her family's history.Winter won the 2007 Winterset Award for boYs, a collection of short stories that are thematically linked by the lives and thoughts of boys and men. The announcement was made late Thursday afternoon at a ceremony at Government House in St. John's.

Winter, a veteran writer who lives in Holyrood and also writes a weekly column in the St. John's Telegram, wins $5,000 for the prize.

Winter is the sister of novelist Michael Winter, the first winner of the award. He won in 2000 for his autobiographical novel This All Happened.

Shortlisted nominees were Paul Rowe, for his novel The Silent Time, and George Rose, a well-known fisheries scientist who wrote Cod: An Ecological History of the North Atlantic Fisheries. Each won $1,000...

The Winterset Award was established in 2000 by newspaper columnist Richard Gwyn to honour the best writing in Newfoundland and Labrador. It commemorates his late wife, Sandra Fraser Gwyn, a St. John's-raised journalist and author who chronicled the arts community of her home province, and who died in 2000.

For full article, go to CBC.

course, I wanted to know where Kathleen got her hair done--some nice.

Spuds, say Cheese!

[photograph from: www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000799/index.html]

This is one photography contest that I have to enter. It's the World potato photography contest, launched March 12th in Rome. (Rome? Rome! I know what you're thinking. Ireland, Newfoundland, but Rome?)

According to the press release of that date, the contest was launched--to highlight the role of the potato as a source of food, employment and income in developing countries--by FAO and the United Nations. The contest is being held in conjunction with the UN’s International Year of the Potato (IYP) in 2008.

And how's this factoid: the potato is the world’s number four food crop, after rice, wheat and maize, and grown in more than one hundred countries.

I've been thinking about spuds because I want to grow some at the Cove this summer... maybe some whites, blues, definitely some reds and maybe some fingerlings...

Now the contest details: Winners in the professional and amateur categories will be awarded cash prizes totalling some US$11 000 as well as Nikon cameras. The deadline for entries is 1 September 2008.

For info: IYP-Photo@fao.org

Remembering our friends

Our four hens--Scruffles, Percky, Herbert & Nerbert were surprisingly interesting pets, gave us a lot of joy and a real bonus - delicious fresh free-range eggs. This past weekend they and several other birds were brutally attacked and killed by a mink.

I have nothing good to say about minks. Their need to kill is pointless. This was the third time a mink visited my friend's barn which housed our hens this winter. We all thought we'd mink-proofed the pens after the first visit. We were wrong. I feel terrible for my friend who had to find the 13 ravaged hens and ducks.

I'd been looking forward to writing a column on the joy of raising hens. And there is a lot to say. But that'll have to keep for another day. I think we will try again.

international icecream day - load 'er up!

(Photo credit: Brian Newhook, Keels, Bonavista Bay, NL)

Past saturday, if you didn't know, was international icecream day. Well why not. Those brave or something or other were able to score a free icecream if they showed up in their pyjamas at Moo Moos. My son and his willing dad were the first there, bed hair and all, at 9am for some double dutch choc and the Moo Moos special Turtle cheese Cake. At least that's what I heard. Personally, I preferred a few more snooze minutes - having been at the pool the night before for a good clinic on bracing with Jim Price. You can never get enough practise with braces.

But back to icecream. temporarily. I was reminded of a recent photo submission by Brian Newhook, local paddler and, it appears, iceberg wrangler (though latter description brings on a lot of understandable hand wringing by our club). Nevertheless, as the above photo shows, there is more beauty in nature than can be imagined at times. A perfect melting softserve.

Lick, twirl and keep a good distance.