This is a totem sculpture of the Raven, who found little men hiding in a clam shell on the beach one day and dug them up to throw them out into the world.....damn bird....


Well the BF and I had a very nice trip up north last weekend. We drove
up to Vancouver BC and visited the Museum of Anthropology in the
University of British Columbia.

It's a wonderful museum mostly of native Indian artfacts. Lots of
totem poles,masks and the like. I took some pictures of some interesting
spindle whorls, there were some that were beautifully carved.

The weather was so nice we were going to go to a nearby beach only to
give up fighting with the traffic. So somehow we wound up in what must
be BC's skd row, and I mean THE skid row. Roll up the windows and lock
those doors children.
It was almost as if they had rounded up all the homeless and
downtrodden in the entire city and dropped them on Hastings street. It
was pretty depressing. I actually saw my first baggie, I assume the
little bag the man was selling was some sort of white drug, in fact,
there were several people offering little baggies of white stuff down
this particular alley.

It was a very strange experience, one of those that makes you think on
things you really would rather not. As we drove along that day we passed
a lovely beach just packed with young pretty sunworshipers, a sea of
sunburns. Then after a few blocks we were hit with a big dose of
reality.

I have to say I was genuinly shocked, I've seen a few homeless around Seattle and London, but nothing quite like this.
Makes you think. If I look down and there's shoes on my feet and if I look up and see a roof then you can call me grateful.

All in all it was a nice trip, aparently the government has some funky idea to stop every 200th car coming over the border and we were the lucky ones that day. So they ushered into the customs office where they ignored up for 20 minutes while I imagine they gave my car the once over.

Oh well, the world we live in.