Happy Ayyam-i-Ha
Here are Judy, Helen holding Amelia, our hostess France,
Amelia's grandma from China, and her mother Mary

Recent and much loved guests, Elizabeth & Michael.

I have uploaded a number of recent photos and wanted to start by sharing this shot of my husband holding my great-niece. My husband has a sense of humour which requires that if he knows he's being photographed, he is a clown, so it's hard to get a picture of him as he is. Well, yes, sometimes he's a clown, but he is also a man of enormous tenderness and I think you get a glimpse of it here as he looks at the baby. We so seldom have a chance to see a baby these days, as we have grown children and none are yet married or have children so I am not yet a grandmother. Some day, God willing. In the meantime it is a delight for us to meet the children of my extended family. This is Willow, the second great-grandchild for my parents. She is a lovely baby and we loved meeting her. My eldest daughter, also, and her cousins as well, all enjoyed having "baby-time" at our home...here is a glimpse of cousin Audrey holding her "first cousin once removed". Let's just keep it at cousins. Family.

I have been learning my way around Facebook. It was a bit of an immersion experience but I think I'm getting it figured out as another way to communicate with quite a bit of ease.

There is so much of the poetic in the Baha'i writings. Right now is the period known as Ayyam-i-Ha, the Intercalary Days of "Days of Light". It is a time for gift giving, hospitality, and charity, and my week has been rich with such blessings. The prayer revealed for use during these days is full of imagery: it begins My God, my Fire, and my Light. Appropriately, my reading-to-relax has been the books of Bruce Feiler, walking through his journeys in the Holy Land. I didn't consciously seek them out, when I know that we will be there soon, but I think that they fell into my hands at the right time. I am also listening to a bit more music: the soundtrack from The Pianist, and my eldest daughter gave me the most recent Jann Arden album, a series of covers called Uncover Me, which I am going to go and listen to in front of my fire, with a cup of tea, as soon as I finish writing this entry. The days are lovely with opportunities to celebrate, and the weather has been cooperating, although we are apparently in for a snowstorm on Friday. I have been lunching with good friends and serving dinners to my extended family. Tonight we are having our last evening with nephew Rowan, who is off to Australia tomorrow to visit his sister Emily. Yesterday my nephew Evan, wife Amanda and their daughter Willow left after several days here, during which I got lots of chances to cuddle Willow.

On Friday night, my niece Audrey will be in a production of The Vagina Monologues at the Bronson Centre in Ottawa. It's a good chance to come out for a benefit for a women's shelter, so if you live in the area, do come along.

And now, tea and company.

I have thoughts today about the Facebook phenomenon. I am figuring it out, little by little, and it reminds me of that "six degrees of separation" idea...when you start figuring out who knows whom, who keeps friends, how intimately you want to know anyone: there are so many stories. For example, I had a lovely message from a former student (who was more of a friend than a student), Lia Nassim. It had been a long time, but it was heartwarming to be connected again, even in cyberspace. But there are always the underlying questions: why didn't we keep in touch before this? What has happened in your life? Are you interested in what has happened in mine? I suppose the implicit answers are always: because. Lots. Maybe.

If you really want to keep in touch, you do; and yet, there are always people who are in the periphery, who aren't actively part of your life, the "dailiness" of what goes on, where you are, what you are doing...and the dailiness of going out to dinner and the movies, curling up in front of the fire and drinking tea and telling stories. Through all the years since I left the Maxwell International Baha'i School, for example, there have been varying degrees of connection. Some friends have made considerable efforts to come and see us (probably the most surprising and one of the most delightful visits was from Luke Baumgartner, aka Ahkivgak Kiana, who took the bus through the long winter roads from Chicago, but who really connected with Bernie, niece Audrey, and our eldest daughter by doing so). There are those who have kept in touch by telephone and e-mail, some with frequency. There is little that makes a person feel more connected than answering the phone and finding that it is someone you thought had forgotten you, but there they are calling, just out of the blue. Jake did that once...told me he just felt like talking...and we were on the phone for hours. It deeply touched my heart. Several people have written often; I feel a part of their lives, and like they are a part of mine. In fact, I am going to make an effort to go to Montreal pretty soon to see Juliette and her family, give a hug to her new baby. I feel like a part of their extended family, not in the daily intimate sense, but in the way of connection, of genuine heart-felt inclusion, in sharing some of the process of this grand philosophical adventure we're all in together. And I still miss having tea with Tah.

Others, of course, become the friends you run into somewhere, barely recognize, say "Hello, how are you?" and don't wait for the answer. I find as I get older that I don't want to be one of those people: I don't have time for the social niceties of not-really-caring. If I ask how you are, I want it to be because I'm genuinely interested in knowing, not because it's expected. If I tell you I love you, it will be because I do. I find I can't even sign a letter with "love" unless I am actually feeling a little love...or maybe a lot. I take language, and life, and friends, way too seriously to be able to dismiss time and distance as though they were not meaningful. It's true, some time I'll see someone I've not seen in years, and they will be a part of my heart the way they always have been, kind of like a dormant virus. Well, maybe not a virus...just a part memorized by atomic structure. They're in my blood. They're part of me because once, we said hello, I love you, and meant it.

As for the rest, I am happy to know that there are people out there who sometimes think of me fondly, and likewise. But for real communication, that's not enough. I'm about the dailiness...about caring being truly a part of breathing, and knowing this. I am blessed with people in my life who have been like that since I was young enough to not even be able to remember. They are part of my heart in ways that mean something real to me, and no words of speculation about how, and when, we communicate, could do them justice. I don't need to find them on Facebook: they're already with me, and their spirit is part of mine, and vice versa.

I've just bought one of my favourite books to give to my new grand-niece, Willow. It's Robert Munsch's Love You Forever. I hope it's true; I hope I will. She's part of my blood, part of me, new to the world, yet in that eternally mysterious way, she has always been there, even before she was a twinkle in her daddy's eye. I held him when he was a baby, and sang to him, and now I will sing to her. And time being what it is, perhaps someday I'll dance at her wedding...whether on these rocky old knees, or from the unseen realm. Because we're connected. Because we are one, and I love her.

More from Annie Dillard. I am immersing myself in Annie Dillard. It's like swimming in a language already made familiar by love of the word, by love of the world, by love. Every day I find more reflections. Here are some:

The writer studies literature, not the world. ...He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know.
The writer knows his field-what has been done, what could be done, the limits- the way a tennis player know the court. And like that expert, he, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. He hits up the line. In writing, he can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil. Reason balks, poetry snaps; some madness enters, or strain. Now, courageously and carefully, can he enlarge it, can he nudge the bounds? And enclose what wild power?
The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature...The art must enter the body, too. A painter can not use paint like glue or screws to fasten down the world. The tubes of paints are like fingers; they work only if, inside the painter, the neural pathways are wide and clear to the brain. Cell by cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, part of the brain changes physical shape to accommodate and fit paint.
You adapt yourself, Paul Klee said, to the contents of the paintbox. Adapting yourself to the contents of the paintbox, he said, is more important than nature and its study. The painter, in other words, does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents. Klee called this insight, quite rightly, "an altogether revolutionary new discovery."...'
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, "Do you think I could be a writer?"
"Well," the writer said, "I don't know....Do you like sentences?"
The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences. If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, "I liked the smell of paint."
...
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?
...What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking...

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then--and only then--it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way...

One line of a poem, the poet said---only one line, but thank God for that one line--drops from the ceiling...It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes back and rips away your breath.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

And I continue to learn...so here is a picture I found on facebook, of some lovely young women who are all my relatives: daughters and nieces.

Back from my swim...and catching up on blogs done by people I am close to...and I must recommend that you have a look at Harsh & Nysa's blog (from the Amazon). You won't regret it.

And another thing: do these young people really want to know that their mothers are online with them???

I think not.

All my life I have been good at communicating. I wrote snail mail letters, longhand, by the dozen, back in the day when that was what was available to be written. As soon as I understood about e-mail, blogging, and MSN, I signed on. Now, I have discovered FaceBook. I know that if I were to get into the cell phone generation, I could text away to my heart's content.

Certainly, there is a certain pleasure in saying "hi" to people after a few years via a "poke" or a greeting. It's good to know that one former student is a Harvard graduate, and another is playing Scrabble with yet two more young Belizean friends. It's fun. It's also good to be able to leave the "Ms" Heather image or persona which never felt comfortable anyway. I was "just Heather" for a decade. Now I am getting accustomed to "Professor Cardin", although I told the students that I prefer to be addressed as Heather. Some do, some don't. My point is that I like being "in touch."

I must observe, however, that although we have many ways of communicating, we still seem to have very little of substance to communicate about. I don't say this judgmentally, or sadly...just with interest that all this poking and messaging and MSN stuff goes on, much of it completely public and available to anyone who wants to tune in (thanks to Chris for the glimpse of Salma's lovely breasts)...and most of the messages seem to have gone from "Hi, how are you, I am fine" to "Hey, whassup, check this out dude." Or the next generational blather.

I generalize, I know. Yet I remember, back in the day when computers started getting personal, we thought it would save the trees. Less paper. Books online. A brave new world of instant communication, along with instant cereal, the nutritional equivalent of theatre makeup. Lest I rant, I will pose the simple question: With all these means of communication, what are we actually saying? And the corollary: is anybody listening?

Have a good (great, awesome, cool) day. Communicate this.

Today I will post the same post I wrote for my poetry blog...because today, I have been immersed in possibility.

Winter's hibernation brings with it the opportunity to read. Serendipity has brought me this winter to the incomparable Annie Dillard. I started with Teaching a Stone to Talk, which fell into my hands at a local second-hand bookstore. I am a believer in these kinds of signs: an impulse stop, and while I couldn't find the poets I was looking for (Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens), there was Annie, waiting. I read, and fell in love. So I ordered from Amazon...and today, two of her books arrived. I could have kissed the mailman.

I am deep into Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Next will be The Writing Life. I wish I could just loll beside the fireplace, drink tea with honey, and read Annie. Wait! I can. Well, almost. I have one class left before we have reading week at the university, so must venture out into the unseasonable cold in order to teach. Until then, I am working on my own books but also allowing myself to curl up with Dillard, and in the spirit of sharing, I will offer you some of her lines.

It's about spirit: I have come to believe that perhaps we are not as fearful of showing our spirit-life, in writing, as post-modernism had led me to believe. I can't be quite as cynical as I thought I was supposed to be, and in fact, this week a letter came from Oberon Press in which some very interesting critique was offered of my own work. I was told that my "collection of poems is literate and intelligent." This was a fine opening line, and the writer went on to let me know the elements which I need to work on. The gist of it was that I was sacrificing some things for the sake of "experimenting with words and structures." However, he said, "What I do like most about your work, though, is the vision that seems to be inherent in the words; the scope and depth of what you see is manifest and impressive." I can live with rejections like that; the writer gave me some good advice and suggested I submit elsewhere, since they are now almost not publishing poems. I found it a very helpful critique, however, because it seemed to me that it was correct: I have been sacrificing substance for expediency. I have lost my true voice in experimentation, and I think it is time to revisit my heart, not in some solipsistic fashion but to remember who I am, and my spiritual core, and allow this to be the tone animating my work.

In order to do this, I have to "fill up" with spirit again, and I can't imagine a better teacher than the writing of Annie Dillard. Her work is, in a word, numinous. I wrote three response poems to her, a couple of weeks ago, and read them at a poetry event to a receptive crowd. I like them. I like their form and flow, and I have sent them out to see if others like them too. But I think they will mark the core of a new direction, for me. At the same time, I am working again on myth; Karen Armstrong's short work, The History of Myth, also fell into my hands, and I feel like I am being immersed in the pellucid warmth of history, the return to the present, and hopefulness, all of which are very powerful as I wait out the cold.

Here is Annie. She starts by citing the Koran, when "Allah asks, 'The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest thou I made them in jest?' It's a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction?" She continues, cites Pascal coining the idea of God as Deus Absconditus, and asks, "Is this what happened?" Later in the same paragraph she says, "It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly its hem."

This passage launches me into a meditation, a recognition of the ideas behind Baha'u'llah's mystical work, The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys (in which He draws on Persian mystic lore and poets, including Rumi and Hafiz), and we wander the valleys of search, giving ourselves up through love and knowledge ultimately to the seventh valley, the Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness. A gift, a paradox. So much of Annie Dillard's work recognizes and explores the paradoxes of creation. Oh, oh!

And so much of her work is grounded in the animating principle of the infusion of beauty into the living world. Beauty, beauty. She says, "...that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there." Here is an invitation to presence, to the Presence, to the acknowledgment of our deep need to swim in the ineffable. It is no surprise to me to find her swimming in light.

I know she understands these mysteries, at a level beyond "understanding", when she says, "But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut."

Yes, yes. I learned, the other day, that when a Baha'i goes on pilgrimage (as I will with my family this coming summer), the first time you enter the holy buildings, it is without a camera. You are free to go back afterwards and take pictures to your heart's content, but in the first moments of communion, you rely on the present-ness, the being-ness of the moment of intimacy. Spirit, walking in the world.

Yet you can't just make it happen, and Annie writes to this, as well. "But I can't go out and try to see this way," she says, speaking of the second way. "I'll fail, I'll go mad."

Indeed. I know. She adds, "All I can do is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as surely as a newspaper dangled before my eyes. The effort is really a discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle; it marks the literature of the saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, discalced and shod. The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance. 'Launch into the deep,' says Jacques Ellul, 'and you shall see.'"

There is more, much more, of what one can call, in a somewhat facile manner, meditation. It is tempting to share every morsel, but you can always buy and read the book. She says, "The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price....But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise." She says, "Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth Ailinon, alleluia! I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff."

This is me, sailing, flying, immersing myself in water, in words, in the Word. This is me praying, shimmering alleluia. This is me reading Annie Dillard, a woman who writes of trees, "The trees especially seem to bespeak a generosity of spirit. I suspect that the real moral thinkers end up, wherever they may start, in botany. We know nothing for certain, but we seem to see that the world turns upon growing, grows towards growing, and growing green and clean."

This is me waiting for planting, waiting to sink to my calcified knees in the greening of spring, praying, almost in bloom. This is me, hoping for Amen.

So many things to share...but the one I thought you might enjoy today is a quotation I am reflecting about. I have been reading Karen Armstrong again. I have read several of her works, and recently read her account of her life, as a young woman, in the convent. Now I am reading her book for the series on myth, and thought I would share this bit:

The earliest mythologies taught people to see
through the tangible world to a reality that seemed to embody
something else. But this required no leap of faith,
because at this stage there seemed to be no metaphysical gulf
between the sacred and the profane. When people looked at a stone,
they did not see an inert, unpromising rock.
It embodied strength, permanence, solidity and an absolute mode of being
that was quite different from the vulnerable human state.
Its very otherness made it holy.
A stone was a common hierophany –
revelation of the sacred –
in the ancient world.
Again, a tree, which had the power to effortlessly renew itself,
incarnated and made visible a miraculous vitality
denied to mortal men and women. When they watched the waning and waxing
of the moon, people saw yet another instance of the sacred powers of regeneration,
evidence of a law that was harsh and merciful,
and frightening as well as consoling.
Trees, stones and heavenly bodies were never objects of worship in themselves
but were revered because they were epiphanies of a hidden force
that could be seen powerfully at work in all natural phenomena,
giving people intimations of another, more potent reality.

Karen Armstrong
A Short History of Myth

Surprise! I thought that this would be a good day to put up one of the pictures taken on Friday night at the Ottawa Creative Writers' Group reading at the Baha'i Centre. For those of you who haven't met me...here I am! I note that my lovely green earrings were a gift from my sister Laurel and the gorgeous shawl was a 50th birthday present from a very kind woman here in our Gatineau community, Hélène Panalaks.

The book I was reading some excerpts from (by way of epigraphs to new poems) is Annie Dillard's incredible Teaching a Stone To Talk: Expeditions and Encounters. Oi, oi! If you have not read her, you must. She is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, of course, but what I loved about her work in this particular book, aside from her palpable love for the environment, is the poetic nature of her prose and the delight in descriptiveness of places she has been and how they have affected her spirit...without any kind of didactic pedantry at all. As R. Buckminster Fuller's jacket citation reads, "Annie Dillard archingly transcends all other writers of our day." Yes. Let me titillate you with just one reflection:

I alternate between thinking of the planet as home-dear and familiar stone hearth and garden-and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. Today I favor the latter view. The word "sojourner" occurs often in the English Old Testament. It invokes a nomadic people's sense of vagrancy, a praying people's knowledge of estrangement, a thinking people's intuition of sharp loss: "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers:our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding."...Our life seems cursed to be a wiggle merrily, and a wandering without end. Even nature is hostile and poisonous, as though it were impossible for our vulnerability to survive on these acrid stones.
Whether these thoughts are true or not I find less interesting than the possibilities for beauty they may hold. We are down here in time, where beauty grows.

Oh, I love that last line..."We are down here in time, where beauty grows." The whole passage seems like a fitting way of saying Bon voyage to Gail Ross. I heard today, from our friend Edwina, that Gail has just said goodbye to this place...her sojourn here is over and she has moved on. She leaves many friends. I knew her only for a short time, when I was seventeen, on the islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon, where I lived with her as a Baha'i pioneer. She was from Montreal, and had found the upper floor of a house on the island, and welcomed me in to live with her, a young woman first setting out. It was a safe, lovely, and loving place to land...and Gail, such a friend. I loved a story that Edwina shared with me, about Gail, and I will place it here for you to say a little prayer for her flight to the holy and welcoming places in the next world:

I knew she was in poor health-fibromyalgia or something like that, but she never dwelt on it or even mentioned it. We exchanged e-mails often the past few years and she was always so upbeat and jolly. In fact, I enjoyed her healing prayers and encouragement... and now feel she is watching me from the other world.

A few years ago she took up the harp. One of the last anecdotes she wrote to me was about taking an Air Canada flight somewhere with the harp. Air Canada left it on the runway, only to have the plane run over it! Gail just laughed it off; she got a ...replacement from them. She always looked at the silver lining. So now I can think of her up in the clouds playing her
harp and taking care of me from there. With pink hair.

This post is in memory of Gail, borrowing the words of Annie Dillard, sojourners one and all.

It has been a busy time, and continues to be. Friday night's evening of poetry and music, at the Baha'i Centre in Ottawa, went very well, and was very spirit-filling. There are many activities, particularly when one is involved with a religious community, as I am. Yet these are not activities for activity's sake; more opportunities to be open to what can happen when you are blessed with people in your life who have depth, caring, and spirit. Yesterday, I had a wonderful conversation with such a person, who is not well-known to me but who was one of the guests in attendance at a retirement party for our friend Marilee. Marilee, also a Baha'i and also a teacher with the Western Quebec School Board, has recently retired and is going to teach in China. One of her colleagues, a man named Ron, gave one of the most exceptionally excellent speeches on her behalf that I have ever heard at such an event. Wise, funny, and eloquent. I applauded enthusiastically!

Anyway, I had a chance, along with my dear friends Bob and David (the Elder) to talk at length with Marie Ange, who, as her name implies, is an angel! We first met when I was still working at Hadley Junior High, when she was introduced to the staff in her capacity of Spiritual Adviser to the schools in the district. The province of Quebec, where we work, recognizes that students need more than an academic education, and in addition to Moral Education, which is a class for all students to explore self-growth with a guiding teacher, there is, in each district, a cadre of people who go into schools to enhance learning about spiritual growth. Not religion: even the word, 'God', cannot be mentioned because of the concern about sectarian rivalry and promoting a particular denomination. Spirit, however, is recognized, and it is Marie Ange's job to go to 18 schools in our region (how she does it all I can't imagine!) to supplement the enrichment experience for both teachers and students. It's a lovely, critical job and she does it with grace, as I remember from my days at Hadley.

So it was a real treat to see her, and it also made me think that I should share with you the quotation which has been on my refrigerator door for some time, ever since my good friend Kurt Hein, in Oregon, sent it for my contemplation. I like it a lot, but it needs a word of explanation. As you may know, Baha'u'llah is regarded as the most recent Manifestation or teacher from God, a prophet following in the history and traditions of those from time immemorial who are sent by the Creator to remind us of our spiritual selves. He is given many titles (as were His predecessors, such as Buddha, Zoroaster, Krishna, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed...) and one of these is "the Blessed Beauty". I note this so that you will understand this quotation from 'Ali'Akbar Furutan, who compiled Stories of Baha'u'llah. Here, then, are words for this Sunday in February...a day when here in western Quebec, the sun sparkles on snow and the blue spruce outside my office window is a picture postcard.

"The Blessed Beauty often remarked:
'There are four qualities which I love
to see manifested in people:
first, enthusiasm and courage;
second, a face wreathed in smiles
and a radiant countenance;
third, that they see all things
with their own eyes and
not through the eyes of others;
fourth, the ability to carry a task,
once begun, through to its end.'"

Wishing you 'faces wreathed in smiles' and success in your endeavours.

This morning I invite you into our home. It is a cool white February morning: you can see the white glow of winter through the doors onto the deck, with Bernie's barbecue silhouetted beyond the windows. You can see why I call myself heather_in_red for my hotmail account: the winter colours are in full array. The tulips on the red tablecloth are yellow with red stripy centres, and are gradually opening up. There is still a surviving poinsettia plant on the divider between the dining room and kitchen. Most of my other plants have now been moved into my green office, where I sit and type. In the living room, you can see how family photographs are placed above the mantelpiece. Most of the pottery over there is from Honduras, brought carefully home to Canada. On the hearth, you see a pot given to me by my brother-in-law's sister-in-law (figure that out!) and in it, eucalyptus in green and red along with bullrushes (cattails) that Bernie and I went out in spring '05 to collect. Sprayed with hairspray, they last a long time. If it were night time, the fire would be burning cheerfully. We have been having almost daily evening fires, and will again tonight. Bernie likes the fact that the fireplace features a fan, so that when it gets really warm we can flick a switch and fan the heat out to the rest of the house, and reduce our electricity bill! I flick it on and off according to the noise level in the house. If it is noisy, I don't hear the fan, but in the quiet, it sounds too much like white noise and I'd rather be cozy, warm, and silent.