Sunday, May 27, 2007

The Lilac Festival

Location: 4th St. SW, Calgary, AB, Canada
Local Time: Sunday, May 27, 2007

The Lilac Festival is a yearly event, in late May. This is my first year here in Calgary, so of course I've never been before.

I thought it was great.



There was piles of food (though I didn't actually eat anything), booths for shirts, jewelry, henna tattoos and lots of other stuff.

My favorite was the performances. I saw at least 3 different belly dance shows,





2 salsa dancing performances, a magic show (which was after the lion dance that I missed),



singers and musicians and capoeira.

Cricket in Riley Park

Location: Riley Park, 8th Ave NW, 12th St. NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Local Time: Saturday afternoon, May 27, 2007

So, when I was in Merritt about a week ago, I was talking to a fellow from Calgary who said he had heard that there was often people practicing poi and fire spinning in Riley Park, evenings and weekends.

He hadn't been there yet, due to weather difficulties, but he'd heard about this from other people.

I thought I'd swing by and take a look. I didn't find any poi, so I'll have to try again for that. I did find a couple of cricket fields. Unbelievable. People in Canada play cricket? I had no idea. I had never seen cricket until I was in Nepal in 2005.

CBBAG in Calgary

Location: NW of Calgary
Local Time: Friday, May 25, 2007

For those of you not in the know, CBBAG is the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, a group dedicated to the bookarts. I did not belong to the Vancouver chapter, however I had weekly binding lessons with Terry Rutherford, so she kept me up to date on what was happening. Here in Calgary, I thought I'd try to get in contact with the local scene.

There were bookbinders, professional and hobbyist, papermakers, paste papermakers and other connected arts, I'm sure. A fun group. On Friday, it was a BBQ hosted at Robert and Jamie's house. Robert and Jamie run Octavia Press out of their basement, as well as the Illuminata Bookstore.

The Illuminata Bookstore in particular seems like it would be worth keeping an eye on. They host a variety of events in the store, music and meetings for groups and so forth.