A bird's-eye view of life

 

Bill Lishman, who taught birds to fly with him, remembered for thinking outside the box

The 1996 movie Fly Away Home starring Jeff Daniels was based on Lishman’s autobiography, Father Goose.

Lishman was the first human to lead birds in the air and lead birds on their first migration with an ultralight aircraft

By FATIMA SYEDStaff Reporter

Tues., Jan. 2, 2018

Lying in bed one night in 1985, Bill Lishman told his wife Paula that he was going to teach birds to fly with him.

The dyslexic, colour-blind, wildly creative sculptor woke his three young kids up and told them the same thing. They laughed off their ever-enthused, larger-than-life father and went to bed.

But for the next three years they all worked with geese, which “imprint” on the first thing they see, considering that person or thing to be their parent and follow it. Lishman tried to get them to imprint on the sound of an engine and follow his motorcycle first, and then, his plane.

In 1988, Lishman took off in an ultra-light plane (picture a lawn-chair with wings) with a flock of 12 Canadian geese on either side of him. In a V-formation, together they flew — the geese had imprinted on the plane.

Five years later, he flew with 36 birds to South Carolina from Scugog township in Durham Region.

His flight was documented in the 1996 movie Fly Away Home starring Jeff Daniels and was based on Lishman’s autobiography, Father Goose.

“Prior to shooting Fly Away Home, I’d always consider myself a creative spirit but when I met Bill, I found someone even more creative, even more alive, even more imaginative,” Daniels wrote in an email to the Star. “He taught me a lot about what it means to be a true artist and it was an honour playing him.”

Lishman died Dec. 30. Ten days prior, he had been diagnosed with leukemia. He was 78.

He died in the house he built: a 2,600-square-foot underground home with igloo-like domes, built on top of a hill overlooking the Purple Woods valley and Lake Scugog, 80 kilometres northeast of Toronto.

Like everything he did in his life, his family was close by: his wife of 50 years, fashion designer Paula, 68; his two sons, Aaron, 45, and Geordie, 42; and his daughter Carmen, 34.

“Everything he made seemed to either take flight or was about to,” said Will McGuirk, a friend of the Lishman family and local arts and culture writer. “Everything he worked on seemed to elevate us as a planet and give us a view from way out there.”

His flight with birds impacted the way migration was explored by biologists, helping to preserve the whooping crane.

Lishman was raised by a Quaker mother on a dairy farm in Pickering, where dinner preparation involved anatomy lessons. He never finished high school but was, in his words, “unencumbered by formal education.” He learned how to work with metal at a blacksmith’s workshop he moved into as a young adult.

“He had a real sense of the big picture,” his son Aaron said. “As much as technology would allow, he experienced it all. He had the ability and the nerve to make it happen. He had the vision and tenacity to see it through and to bring it to reality.”

Later in life, he’d receive two honorary degrees for his extraordinary imagination.

“He was a renaissance man, probably one of the only one I’ll ever meet, a true multi-talented intellect,” said family friend Kerri King.

Over the years, his sculptures kept getting bigger and taller: a 13-metre-high metal sculpture inspired by icebergs in the Arctic installed at the Canadian Museum of Nature; a 26-metre metal cone with a swirling, still flow of traffic created for Expo ’86; 25 steel figures representing different human movements from dancing to snowboarding installed outside Bridgepoint Hospital in Toronto.

“He didn’t separate himself from the land, nature, air, birds,” said Mary Delaney, chair of Land over Landings, an advocacy group against plans to build an airport in Pickering, while preserving the farmland community in the central ontario region.

“It was all one big inter-connected adventure.”

Land over Landings succeeded People or Planes, the movement Lishman helped found in the 1970s to fight the same cause. Lishman, one of the creative visionaries of the movement, staged mock hangings and led a march with coffins on Queen’s Park, labelled with names such as “Mother Nature.” It inspired Delaney, as did his constant advocacy work in the Arctic, Nicaragua and in his own backyard.

Lishman’s words “in nature there are no straight lines” is being remembered widely in the days after his death.

“He just stepped on top of all those obstacles and kept on climbing,” Delaney said. “He taught us all to look at things askew. He taught us to think outside the box, over the box, under the box, through the box.”

  At the end of a 2015, Lishman responded to the Oshawa This Week newspaper’s request for 16 words for the new year. His response: “Aliens will finally reveal that they are actually angels and will save us humans from ourselves.”

Plans for his funeral are still underway, the family said.

“How do you really capture everything that dad was?,” his daughter Carmen said.

The perfect send-off, said his wife Paula, would be to have it outside with planes flying over and birds all around. No minister, just the people who imprinted on him through his work and his persona.

Woman with aggressive cancer marries in the hospital. She dies the next day

The day David Mosher planned to propose marriage to Heather, she found out she had cancer. He said to himself, "She needs to know she’s not going to go down this road alone.”

Heather Mosher celebrates her wedding to David Mosher at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Conn. on Dec. 22. Fighting breast cancer, the 31-year-old school psychologist died the next day.  (CHRISTINA.LEE.PHOTOGRAPHY / INSTAGRAM)  

By The Associated Press

Tues., Jan. 2, 2018

HARTFORD, CONN.—A woman fighting breast cancer got married at a hospital 18 hours before she died.

Heather Mosher was dressed in her wedding gown and lying in bed wearing an oxygen mask as she and David Mosher said “I do” Dec. 22 at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford. A photo shows her raising both her arms in the air in an apparent display of triumph.

The 31-year-old school psychologist died the next day.

The East Windsor couple fell in love after meeting at a swing dancing class in 2015. David Mosher told news organizations that on the day he planned to propose to her, Dec. 23, 2016, she was found to have cancer. But he decided to go through with the proposal that night as they rode a horse-drawn carriage.

“I said to myself, ‘She needs to know she’s not going to go down this road alone,’ ” he told WFSB-TV.

Despite surgeries and chemotherapy, the aggressive form of cancer spread and she had to be put on a ventilator. They set a wedding date of Dec. 30, 2017, but doctors urged them to do it sooner and they moved up the date.

On the day of the wedding, family and friends worked together to get Heather Mosher into her gown and a wig. The couple exchanged vows in the hospital’s chapel.

David Mosher said some of his wife’s final words were her vows.

“It was just like surreal because I’m supposed to be exchanging vows to her and here I am saying goodbye,” he told ABC News.

Her funeral was held Saturday, the original date of the wedding.

 

 집에 퍼니스(furnace)가 고장이나 며칠 동안 고생을 했습니다. 영하 십 도 이하의 강추위가 일주일 이상 지속하였는데 하필 그 시기에 난방기구에 문제가 생겼지 뭡니까. 내복을 입고 셔츠 위에 오리털 옷을 두 개씩이나 껴입고도 모포를 뒤집어쓰면서 지내야 했습니다. 빵모자를 쓰고 두꺼운 장갑을 끼는 건 당연했지요. 그렇게 며칠 그렇게 떨고 지내보니 집안이 따뜻하다는 것도 거저 주어지는 것이 아님을 알게 되었습니다. 사실 아무리 춥다고 한들 체감온도 영하 이삼십 도를 오르내리는 거리에서 겨울을 지내야 하는 분들에는 비할 바 못 되지만요. 춥다는 핑계로 2018년 첫날 이웃의 초대를 받아 아침 식사를 함께하였습니다. 마침 이웃의 네이버(neighbor)가 퍼니스를 고치는 일을 하시는 분이라 소개를 받아 다음 날 아침 퍼니스를 고쳤습니다. 공기 구멍에서 따뜻한 바람이 술술 나와 실내온도가 23도까지 올라가자 신기하다는 생각까지 들었습니다. 그렇게 퍼니스를 고친 후 어제(2018년 1월 둘째 날)는 온종일 아내와 함께 이게 꿈인가 생시인가 말하며 행복해했었답니다. 

 

 오늘 아침 신문에는 슬프지만, 마음을 따뜻하게 하는 훈훈한 기사가 실렸습니다. 죽기 18시간 전에 결혼식을 올린 한 신부의 이야기입니다. 암에 걸린 줄 알면서도 결혼식을 올리기로 한 신랑도, 결혼식 날짜를 당기도록 권유한 의사도, 결혼식을 올린 18시간 후 행복하게 죽어간 신부도 새해 아침 감동을 선물해준 마음 따뜻한 사람들입니다.

 기러기와 함께 날았던 비저너리 아티스트이자 발명가 빌 리시먼(Bill Lishman)이 78세의 일기로 세상을 떠났다는 기사도 실려있습니다. 그가 했던“Aliens will finally reveal that they are actually angels and will save us humans from ourselves.”라는 말과 Mary Delaney(Chair, Land Over Landings)의 “He taught us all to look at things askew. He taught us to think outside the box, over the box, under the box, through the box.”라는 말에 눈길이 갑니다.