Tag Archives: Victoria

City of Angels

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Hi Folks:

On most evenings, around sunset, you’ll see groups of people gathered along the Dallas Road walkway that runs along the south shore of Victoria. Every sunrise and every sunset is unique, but sometimes the Earth just outdoes herself. This was January 24, 2019, at Holland Point.

Marcia’s image first. This is a composite of 10 cell phone images, joined up with Autopano Pro and pushed around a bit in Lightroom.

City of Angels 1

Mike recently received a new Sony A7RIII camera and has been playing with it a bit. Three images here, at different focal lengths:

City of Angels 2

57mm

City of Angels 3

24mm

City of Angels 4

12mm

Obviously, the sky and the ocean deserve most of the credit here. Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,

M&M

2018: A Photography Retrospective

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Hi Folks:

As we close out 2018, many photographers choose to offer their best 10 or 12 images of the year. We did something similar with our 2019 Photo Calendars post, but we wanted to offer our favourite images from the year as well. Perhaps not coincidentally, they were both featured in our upcoming calendar.

Marcia’s first:
Dew DropsVictoria is known as the city of flowers, and Marcia loves to do flower macros. The timing on this one allowed her to capture some of the morning’s moisture as well, and if you look in the spheres you can see continuing reflections of the flowers!

And Mike’s:
Coquihalla RiverThis is a composite image of 30 images, made on the trail near the Othello Tunnels outside of Hope, BC. Fortunately it was a relatively windless day, so the images stacked together added to the sense of flow in the water without too much movement in the leaves on shore.

Creating a retrospective is a worthwhile exercise for every photographer. We went through over 12,000 images to choose the 12 for our calendar images! With digital it’s easy to shoot a thousand images a day, but how many of them are your best work?

Now go out and make some images!

Hugs,
M&M

Book Signing Magic!

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Good afternoon!

Last Saturday the Rainbow Mouse family was at Coles, Tillicum Mall for a book signing event, and one of the first people to come to the table was a lovely woman who purchased a book and went to pay for it before having it autographed. When she returned, a young girl was standing at the table with her brother and her dad, who was about to buy the book for his daughter. The lady gifted the book to the girl, gave the receipt to the man and promptly walked away! Congratulations to Callysta for the magical arrival of her book, thanks to her dad for promising to pay it forward, and extra special thanks to the anonymous (and generous) donor! Whoever you are, dear woman … your act of kindness was truly precious!

Callysta and Marcia, Coles Tillicum, Nov 3, 2018

Callysta and Marcia, image © Coles, Tillicum Mall

The Rainbow Mouse family will be at Coles, Westshore Town Centre this Saturday (November 10) for another signing; come by to buy a book (which I’ll happily autograph), free stickers, free colouring pages, and free hugs! Who knows what magic we can conjure up together!

In Light and Laughter,
Marcia.

Three Seconds of Connection

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When we’re out hugging, that’s the very least you’ll get from us. We’ll look you in the eye, smile, wave and offer you a wish for a wonderful day. What happens next is entirely up to you. You can ignore and walk on by, smile and/or wave back, return our greeting… Or you can engage us and come in for a hug (or two). We really appreciate it when you do. ☺️

Hugs,
M&M

Marcia and Nathalie

Marcia and Nathalie

 

Book Signings!!

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Good afternoon, everyone!!

As the author of The Adventures of Rainbow Mouse and A Year in the Life of a Bus-Traveling Poet, one of my favourite things to do is to meet with fellow authors and readers of all ages!!

To that end, I am excited to announce that I have two book signings coming up this month: September 8th at Coles on the lower level of Tillicum Mall, and September 22nd at the Coles store at Westshore Town Centre. Both events are 11-4. If you’re in the Victoria area, please stop by. In addition to being able to purchase my books (and I’ll be more than happy to dedicate them for you) there will be plenty of laughter, free stickers, free colouring pages and plenty of Free Hugs!!

Marcia and the Rainbow Mouse team.

P.S. If you’re not able to make the signing events, my books are available at Coles, several other local stores and through our website. I’ll be more than happy to sign books for you with my special crystal pen!! (ssshhh…)

And if you’re a teacher or librarian who would like me to come and do a book reading for your class, I’d be delighted! Please contact me and we’ll set something up. 🌞

Sawatsky Sign-Off: Good News

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Hi Folks: If you’ve read our posts you know that this is our 9th year of hugging tourists and locals down at Victoria’s inner harbour, and that so far we’ve hugged ambassadors from at least 77 countries. Outside of that, however, we lead pretty quiet lives … so we were both shocked and delighted to receive a phone call a week ago from Adam Sawatsky, who works with CTV News, Vancouver Island. At the end of their news broadcasts they feature short segments of good news and uplifting people, giving their viewers an opportunity to head into their evenings with a positive outlook. These segments are collectively known as the Sawatsky Sign-Off.

Continue Reading →

Names That Remain

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Hi Folks:

So far this summer we’ve been keeping a pretty regular schedule going out hugging on Sunday afternoons. We’ve now hugged Ambassadors from 77 countries (that we know of); 55 countries this year alone! As we’ve mentioned, we’ve hugged people in sadness and we’ve hugged people in joy and everywhere in between. While we were out again yesterday, the previous Sunday (August 5) brought several things together for us.

The first was a blog post written by author Robert Fulghum, entitled “Names That Remain” (yes, we stole his title for this post). You can read it for yourself; we’ll wait. Continue Reading →

Nine Years of Hugging…

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Hi Folks:

When we took our first foray down to Victoria’s Inner Harbour in June, 2010 to try sharing hugs with strangers, we had no idea where our adventure would lead us. We were terrified at first, but nine years later, we’re still going strong! In fact we’ve held more free hugs sessions this year than ever before! In 2017 we had 20 sessions; our first was on April 1 (it seemed appropriate) and our last was on December 12. So far this year we’ve held 14 sessions; our first was on March 10 and we’re planning to continue for as long as we can!

In 9 years we’ve shared hugs, stories, smiles, tears, high-fives, waves and so much more with thousands of people from 75 countries (of which we are aware). They are: Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, Eritrea, France, Germany, Guatemala, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kuwait, Libya, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Ireland, Republic of Korea, Republic of Suriname, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, US and Zimbabwe. We’ve hugged people from 52 of those countries so far this year, and we’re always adding new ones to our list!

With few exceptions, we’ve held all of our hugging sessions at the Homecoming Memorial on Wharf Street. It’s a good location for us, and the biggest indicator of time passing has been the growth of the little pine tree behind us. Our tree has been watching over us for a long time, even when it was too short to do so…

Nine Years of Hugging

Same hat, same jacket, same smile and no, the fence hasn’t shrunk any.

That’s it for now. Remember to hug someone you love today. Or a stranger. Or, preferably, both!

Hugs,
M&M

Free Hugs, 2018!!

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Hi Folks:

Last year we were feeling pretty avant garde in having our first Free Hugs session on April 1. We did our last 2017 session on December 10, completing 19 rounds of hugging! Well, Easter is on April 1 this year (which really has us wondering what the Easter Bunny is going to get up to this year, but that’s another topic). Anyway, last weekend was so warm and beautiful we did our first 2018 hugging session on March 10! Continue Reading →