Remembering 2012

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of two paintings from Bugaboos Provincial Park in British Columbia.

Winter Watercolour Weekend in the Wild

Edworthy Falls

Watercolour and oil pastel

©2020 Charlene Brown

I had been planning to re-write a story I started (and abandoned) several years ago, Did She Ever Return? about a painting workshop, ‘Winter Watercolour Weekend in the Wild.’ I was going to start as soon as I got my autofictional collection of short stories uploaded for a final proofreading.

Thinking I might do this as a graphic novel, I began a series of winter scenes near Calgary with this painting.  It is a composite of two locations (that aren’t particularly close together) in Kananaskis Country. 

However, delays in the production of my short story collection, caused by the need to rewrite the fifth story (which takes place in 2020) in real time, have made it necessary to abandon the Winter Watercolour Weekend again.

Remembering 2011

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Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of watercolour sketches of Ohe’o Gulch on Maui, Durnstein in Austria and Marksburg Castle in Germany, as well as paintings of a coffee plantation and the Mayan archaeological site of Copan in Honduras. 

The girl from the sixth generation

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In my recently completed autofictional book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the sixth story begins in 2042, and is of course the most fictitious of all. 

Pictured on the left is Alexandra, my great-granddaughter to be born in 2027, as she will appear on the book cover, along with the other five girls.

Should you be wondering, she’s road-testing experimental electric-assist bounding boots...

Remembering 2010

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Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of two watercolour sketches I did during a Panama Canal cruise, and a watercolour painting of Magog Glacier in British Columbia by Doris Livingstone. 

The girl from the fourth generation

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In my book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the fourth story is about Lisa Browning, a composite character who is (almost entirely) one of my daughters.

Lisa, who was born in Colorado in 1972, is pictured on the left, a drama student at Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga, as she will appear on the book cover, along with the other five girls.  She probably didn’t wear jeans and floppy shirts all the time, but the arts school students sure dressed more casually than we ever did, and may even have been prescient in adopting the 21^st century designer look, sporting holes in everything.

The story of the girl from the fifth generation, Fiona Livingstone, was in my July 2 blog post, Phase 2 of BC’s Restart Plan. Next week I’ll talk about the girl from the sixth generation.

Remembering 2009

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Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of some paintings of Peru, including a watercolour titled Rafting on the Urubamba River, a painted postcard of the archaeological site of Sacsayhuaman, and sketches of the Moray Agricultural complex by Nick Klimchuk-Brown (age 10 at the time) and me (age 67 at the time).

The girl from the third generation

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In my book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the third story is about Mary-Jean Grayson, who was born in Banff in 1942.  She represents my generation of the family.

Mary-Jean is pictured on the left—a student at the University of Alberta in 1960, as she will appear on the book cover with the other five girls.