Judoka

A friend, and a sensei, was visiting with his wife from the southern part of the province for a Judo tournament at the university. He had three judoka with him competing. I always thought judo was a bunch of grappling with hands full of robe, but watching more closely today to try to anticipate throws in order to capture them with the camera, it became clear that judo is not simply technical attempts to kick the butt of your opponent's centre of balance, but profoundly beautiful in that technicality and its bow (forgive the term here) to strict formality and manners.

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more Remembrance Day 2009

Remembrance Day 2009

In the photos here, included is a shot of double Memorial Cross recipients -- Kitty Elliot who lost her husband, brother and cousin in WWII, and Rebeka Bulger who lost her husband to the violence in Afghanistan in July. Insanity 65 years ago, insanity four months ago. Bulger's brothers looked so much alike and surely like their fallen sibling and I looked into the face of the 87 year old woman and tried to see the face of her brother so long gone.

Included too, a shot of an old vet fallen from his chair, later quietly carried from the hall he appeared okay, perhaps simply exhausted from a march on legs too distant from their last formal drill.

I wound up in the press pool taking photographs this morning so I felt a bit "distant" from the ceremony, somehow -- nothing more cynical than a reporter, except perhaps the camera guys.

The image of the young boy saluting so earnestly was the trigger for my tears today, however. Children. In uniforms. But as a friend said looking at the enlisted men and women today, they are all children, really....

Lest we Forget

11h 11/11/2009 Edmonton

Within days of arriving in New Zealand in the mid '80s, I hitched a ride with a man who stopped to offer a ride, he said, because I looked like a Scot, with my beard and plaid tam upon my head. Himself a Scot transplanted to New Zealand some decades earlier his face noticeably went to remembrance, when he learned I was Canadian.

As he drove he told me of being a kid during the second world war, the rationing, the fear, the doing without. Then surely I disappeared in the car and he held out the hand not on the wheel and stared at his palm as if on its horizontal plane it held something and he told of an apple, red and travel weary in consistency, but an apple still. An apple given him at school, to all the kids at school, a gift from the orchards of Canada.

"Thank you," he said, tears in his eyes.

We drove in silence until coming down a long steep hill a small village came into view and he asked if he might buy me a beer. Again, "thanks," as we downed the beer in a quick couple of pulls, and back to the car to continue on our way.

Lest we forget.