I was delighted to attend the second annual Mayor's Lunch for Arts Champions last week.

This celebration of the arts in Calgary happened for the first time in February 2013 (I went with the find it team - some amazing volunteers from Inglewood & Ramsay who are currently hard at work getting ready for the 2014 Inglewood Night Markets). Here's my post about last year's Lunch.

The Mayor's Lunch happens at the BMO Centre on the Calgary Stampede grounds. Before the lunch began, everyone mingled around in the lobby enjoying performances by a bunch of youthful Calgary artists.

Kellie Leitch, Minister of Labour and Minister for the Status of Women, was in Calgary yesterday and I was fortunate enough to get to listen in on her conversation with some local business leaders. What a great opportunity to hear about ways in which Canadian women entrepreneurs (like... yours truly) can be provided with the resources they need. So of course I took notes.

It is a bit hard to make out the details in the image, so here's an experiment - I made the image into a "Prezi," which converts it into a format that allows you to zoom in really close. I've seen this technology before (and was interested to discover it comes from Hungary!), but this is my first attempt at using it. Let me know if this works (in case it doesn't, a plain old-fashioned version of the picture follows). It certainly seems like this would be handy when it comes to viewing complicated text-heavy graphic recording images just like the ones I'm always drawing!

Well, here's the answer: The Drawing Book, Volume 2!  I don't know why it never occurred to me to do this, but I think I'll post it here on my blog, a few pages at a time. This will be fun (I hope)!!! But first - a bit of background about the Drawing Book  in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Basically, at the beginning of the story I was a gloomy art student in Toronto, reading books, working at the Trinity College Library and turning down offers from knights in shining armour (as seen in this sad tale):

By the way, the above link to the Trin Library takes you to a whole new, beautiful, renovated facility, which seems to bear little resemblance to the low-ceilinged basement in which I spent about four years of late-night shifts as a student! (I loved that midnight shift. There was hardly anybody there!)

Anyway, by the end of the first volume I was back in my home town of Calgary, working as a flight attendant, with no shining knights in sight. Instead, I was learning about how messy relationships can be (see below). Blech!

E. M. Forster (in his novel, on which the movie is based), writes that Lucy nearly "joined the vast armies of the benighted," which is pretty much what I was doing back in Ontario, as depicted above. I still have that purple blanket though - it's on my son's bed! But that's a digression within a digression. Back to the facts!

But, for this second volume, I'll just work with what's there. This is the whole truth and nothing but the truth (for now, at least). Of course, though, if you see yourself in there and you'd rather I take you out, please send me a note and I will be more than happy to do so! Otherwise, here goes!

1. The coffee from that machine was really amazing.

2. Marlene: She didn't really forget she was married. It was just that she had only recently gotten married and so she still wasn't used to saying, "my husband," instead of "my boyfriend."

3. Heidi: Her daughter had been engaged (or maybe even married?) to a really famous rock star! But that's another story.

4. I note that there were eleven of us cabin crew members to look after (if memory serves) 232 passengers. Ah. Those were the golden days of flight!! You won't find such large crew complements on many airlines in these penny-pinching days. Alas.

5. In my late teens and early twenties, I didn't see a lot of my mom. She was working a lot and I was away from Calgary a lot. So, when I returned to Calgary in 1997, it took a long time before I got used to the idea that I could just hang out with her anytime I wanted! It was so much fun! Hence my feeling that I was missing out on an opportunity to spend time with her.

6. "Cryptic" reference to the guy I was pining after!

I couldn't find a clip of the part in which he actually asks this suspicious question, but here's what happens after the cocky young ballroom dancer hanging out with his daughter answers: "Pasadoble." 

After our long stay in Mainz, my crew was flown home safe and sound via Manchester. And while in that city, we stayed at the amazing Palace Hotel. Lucky thing I wrote down that name in the book, or I'd never have remembered it. It looks as though it's still in business though, despite having first opened its doors in 1890!

As for my representatives of all things English, I've got: The Who's Roger Daltrey, quoting (for some reason) "Pictures of Lily" and Sara Dylan - who, as far as I know, isn't British at all! Oh well, two out of three ain't bad. Egg on toast sounds pretty British to me.

Speaking of Sara Dylan, I just happened to glance at the Twitter profile of Calgary filmmaker J. S. Johnson a couple of days ago, and here's what he wrote about himself: "People often describe in detail how impossible I am to define, but so very beautiful to look at." Seems like an echo of a line in Dylan's song "Sara" - "So easy to look at, so hard to define."  Hooray for Dylan fans and obscure Dylan references everywhere!

That was the end of that adventure. The next page is about shoes.

What is there to say about that? I still have the Salzburg shoes (I'm still waiting for an occasion to wear them!!) and I still have the silver slippers from Le Lavandou. As for the "ugly shoes" stolen at a gas station in Slave Lake, Alberta... I actually did start writing a comic strip about that story, but I have no idea where it is, so that'll have to wait for another day, too.

That's all for now, but when/if I have some free time again, I'll post the next installment. What do you think?

By 2013, with the help of some great community partners and a few amazing arts grants, our team of five or six unpaid volunteers had put together some great events.

Credit for this amazing photo goes to Cat Laine. Click here to see her website.

But what has to happen to make the Night Markets happen? They don't just run themselves.

Stringing up lights: You need lights at a Night Market, and that means someone has to put them up. Here's Meg walking the walk - she doesn't just dream up creative artsy pop-up events, she also does more than her share of the heavy lifting!

Unloading supplies and putting up signs: We do that too. And this all has to happen on the afternoon of the market. Even if it's raining. So time is of the essence!

Operating heavy machinery: This is a portable light tower that gets set up at each market to shine some light on the street. It has to be assembled and taken down at each market!!!

Decorating: Banners, chalk drawing, sandwich boards. Even if you're five years old, we'd be happy to have you come out and help us decorate!

Manning the information tent: This job is always fun. So many nice folks show up to keep us company at the find it tent. This could be you!

The Perks: We have to take everything down at the end of the night, too. That can be hard work, after a long evening. But last time we did this, a Mexican mariachi band stuck around to play for us while we took down the tents and cleaned up the street! Is there anywhere else in Calgary where you could enjoy something like this? (If there is, please tell me about it!)

So, now that you know what we need, I know you'll want to send us a note right away to volunteers@finditcalgary.ca and sign up to come lend a hand on Friday, September 12th. But don't stop there. I hope you might also want to help us make the market happen again in 2015 and beyond. We've had an overwhelmingly positive response to the event - Calgarians love it! And we'd love to keep it going past this year. But this volunteer in particular isn't sure she'll be able to keep this up. With a job and two little kids, I just don't have the time to contribute to our team (and I haven't actually even been doing a whole lot, beyond making the find it website, doing some promotions, and helping on the day of the market).

When we started find it, we were dreaming of doing all sorts of different cool artsy creative events. This summer, we've spent most of our time running the Night Market. We did it, and we loved doing it... but, at least on a volunteer basis, we can't keep doing this forever. Would you like to help? You would? Let us know! Come talk to us at the find it tent on Friday, at what we hope won't be the last Inglewood Night Market. We need you!