Festivals

Image via Wikipedia

So, let's see, a bunch of little things here for today:

1. We went to the opening of the Kenojuak Ashevak exhibition at the museum (which is also celebrating it's 40th anniversary this year) and she was in attendance. Because I'm an idiot, I forgot to take my camera. Fortunately you can go to Jim's blog or Shelley's as they did manage to remember to bring their cameras. Actually, I strongly considered beating up Jim and stealing all of his camera equipment. But trying to take all that camera equipment and figure out a way to stash one of Kenojuak's pictures under my arms....I just gave up. It was just too complicated.

Seriously, though. If you live in Iqaluit, you simply must to this show. You're crazy if you don't. It's absolutely stunning. Plus there is some of her artwork for sale if you're feeling so inclined.

2. Today is National Aboriginal Day and the start of the Alianait Festival There's the big tent pitched in the school parking lot which will host a lot of the events of the next 10 or so. Again, one of those things to go out and take a look at if you're in town. And lord know we're getting a nice day for it. I'm almost in shock. The weather has been so unimpressive, I was beginning to despair of the notion of spring. However, it's 10C here in town today. We took Boo out for a walk in Sylvia Grinnell Park for an hour or so and then spent an hour picking brambles out of his fur.


3. Today is also the first day of summer, which means it's also the longest day of the year. The sun will set at 11:01 pm and rise again at 2:11 am. Here's a couple of pictures I took last night. The first was at 10 pm and the second one was at 12:45 am. Every year I resolve to go out and shoot some photos during those strange hours at the longest day of the year, but it never works out. But I guess we'll see.



I always feel a touch sad on this day. We've been building for the past six months to the longest day of the year. Now we're on the slow slide back to the shortest day of the year. It's probably silly as we have a couple of months of nice weather to look forward to. Still, there it is.

4. Along with the Nunavut blogging community, I'm also a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador blogging community. And the guy who helps keep things together on that front, Stephen Eli Harris, has picked this blog as his Blog of the Week. Which is nice and I'm always glad to have new traffic directed towards the blog.

I'm actually having a pretty good traffic month after a very substandard April and May. I will never figure out the magic of what can cause a blog's traffic to dip for months on end and then massively spike in another. But as long as you keep showing up for my wit and wisdom, well, who cares. So far this year, 32,500 unique readers have read 40,500 posts. For my small corner of the world, that's not bad.

5. And finally, a Happy Father's Day to my dad. He's actually talking about retiring next year and for the first time I'm almost inclined to believe him. God knows what he'll do with himself, but I'm sure he'll figure something out.

Last Five
1. Phantom limb - The Shins
2. Rag & bone - The White Stripes
3. Mohammed - The Dandy Warhols
4. A day in the life - The Beatles
5. Somebody to love (live) - Queen*