Gifts for Writers

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To follow on my gifts for… theme, here are some gifts for the writers you know.

1) Self-editing for writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. Collins 2nd edition 2004. Great information, exercises and examples for the writer who must edit her own work(and who doesn’t?)

2)Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickham. Writers Digest Books 1993 Understand how scenes and sequels interrelate to give structure to your fiction.

3)Writing the Breakout Novel  by Donald Maass. Writers Digest Books 2001 Donald Maass is and agent and author who gives invaluable advice.

4) The entire Write Great Fiction series from Writers Digest Books.

5) A selection of Hype! highliters from Staples for marking up your own work and these books.

6)Scrivener, a writing, organizing programme from Literature and Latte. Easy to use once you get onto it, and a terrific way to organize thoughts, research, drafts, scenes, characters, locations…and so on.

7) An over-sized Sustainable Earth notebook from Staples

8) Pens, lots of them. I use OptiFlow.

9) An eReader, any one, (but I use a KOBO) for taking books with you on vacation, or even storing your own work as pdf files.

!0) Stephen King’s book, On Writing. Pocket Books 2002. Available for that eReader. A biography of the writer as well as his thoughts and guidance on the craft.

11) Last but not least Turning Leaves Writer’s Retreat from Writescape http://writescape.ca/writescape/retreats/next-retreat/

Gifts for Gardeners

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What to Get for Green-Thumb Types. It’s a No-Gnome Zone.. The gifts in this article from Houzz website are for the modernist on your list. My favourites are the Circle Pot by Potted in Designer Pots and the Lighthouse outdoor torch.
http://www.canadiangardening.com/garden-gear/gardening-gifts/holiday-gifts-for-gardeners/a/28390
This one is lovely and guilt-free.
gift-birdbath.jpg

For the birds
This gift is not only pretty and practical, but it helps more than just our feathered friends. This ceramic bronze birdbath is made by artisans in Vietnam, who are paid a living, fair-trade wage to produce their artistic wares. While it’s a little cold yet to put outside, this birdbath looks elegant on a table filled with fruit. Ten Thousand Villages, $22.

1. Mason Bee House
This gorgeous mason bee house is handmade from reclaimed barn wood. If you’re buying for a gardener who grows fruit or vegetables, this would be a great gift. Mason bees are native to much of the U.S. They are solitary, and don’t produce honey, but they are expert pollinators. They often nest in small holes and cavities in tree trunks, but if you can provide a cozy little house like this for them, you may be able to entice them to take up residence in your own garden. Beautiful and functional. (Via Etsy.)

 masonbee.jpg

I love this butterfly puddler from Uncommon Goods. http://www.uncommongoods.com/product/butterfly-puddler

Gardens Take Flight

There’s nothing quite like a garden aflutter with wild butterflies in the afternoon sun. Attract your neighborhood beauties with this sand-and-water puddler, designed to hold on to natural minerals after water evaporates.

Its shallow well of recycled glass holds sand or rock salt along with a teaspoon of water. When the water evaporates (in under a day), butterflies are attracted to the minerals left behind from the hard water and sand/salt. Once butterflies know where they can find these minerals, they return regularly. Place it in a conspicuous nook to transform your outdoor space into an enchanted garden.

Designed by Jo-Anne and Gerald Warren. Handmade of stoneware and recycled glass in Canada. Click here to see instructions included with each peddler.

  • Item ID: 20351
  • Materials: recycled glass, stoneware clay
  • Approx. 8.5″ L x 8.5″ W x .75″ H, 3 lbs. 6 oz.
  • Comes with sand and instructions for use. Will not crack in the snow or fade in the sun. Due to the handmade nature of this product, each will vary slightly.

From the same company, a toad house:

The Toad Abode

This elegant ceramic piece makes a creative accent to your garden. Toads will be thrilled to duck under this leaf and enjoy the dark and cool shade – they can even burrow holes in their bottomless home. Big bonus: kiss your bugs goodbye, because toads eat thousands of insects. Handmade in Canada.

  • Item ID: 21006
  • Materials: stoneware clay
  • Approx. 12″ L x 7.5″ W x 5″ H, weight: Approx. 3.5 lbs
  • Weatherproof: designed to not fade in the sun or crack in freezing temperatures. Place in a shady spot in your garden.
Finally, for your best friend or your wife or your husband or your mother who taught you all you know about gardening, the bog boot from Lee Valley. For mud, for snow, for tramping in transplants, for walking the dog in the ran, they are the best—warm, comfortable and almost indestructible (unless your husband slices one open with a pruner).
Perfect for working in mucky, cold conditions, these boots are constructed from waterproof neoprene with a semi-rigid natural rubber overlay that spans from the sole to above the ankle. Toe, heel, Achilles tendon, and shin reinforcements offer protection and comfort, making these boots the ideal footwear when digging in the garden. Mid-length boots, they are easily donned using the rear pull-loops. The neoprene walls are flexible and generous in width, and can be easily rolled down if desired.

Canadian Values and Prisons

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/immigrants-should-adopt-canadian-values-to-settle-here-survey-finds/article2237576

Solitary confinement Kingston PenitentiaryA view inside of one of the segregation cells at Kingston Penitentiary. - A view inside of one of the segregation cells at Kingston Penitentiary. | The Canadian Press

Two articles on opposite pages of the Globe and Mail this morning. One spoke of the tremendous support for Canadian values— tolerance for others and equality—that native Canadians and immigrants supported at the same level, the other of the conditions within our prisons, in particular the plan in the Omnibus Bill to deny visitors to people in solitary confinement. The Canadian Bar Association calls that “mean-spirited and counterproductive”. The article quotes  2008 Florida study as showing that prisoners who had family visitors were less likely to reoffend. The evidence against the punitive, unyielding nature of the measures in this bill continue to mount, yet the government remains committed to an approach that is being discredited and dismantled in the prototypic programmes in the US. Even a right-wing stalwart like Newt Gingrich has spoken against this approach, mainly because it is to expensive and it does not work.

If Harper thinks that he must continue with this because he believes he has a mandate to do so, he needs to think again. Those people who supported Canadian values in the survey quoted above, a vast majority, are not likely to long support a prison run on the recommendations of jail guards and their unions alone. Solitary confinement and the punitive instincts of prison administrators led to the death of Ashley Smith in a Kitchener prison. Four years have passed and this “mean-spirited” bill is the result. How many more people have to die?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/mean-spirited-crime-bill-would-deny-visitors-to-punish-inmates/article2237630/

http://alterwords.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/agnes-mcphail-prison-reform/

Agnes McPhail one of the Famous Five, whose statues confront the politicians every day on the Hill, led the demand for prison reform in this country. Prisons in that unenlightened time were based on principles of retribution, not rehabilitation. Are we returning to that, not only inhumane but useless, expensive and unconscionable in a time of economic uncertainty and falling crime?

Guards are afraid of prisoners’ anger and violence. Measures which increase that anger make them less rather than more secure.

I wonder if the Prime Minister should make an unannounced visit to the Kingston Pen or to the prison here in Lindsay, as Agnes McPhail did in 1935. What she saw ignited a crusade that brought down the Conservative Government of R.B. Bennett later that same year. On second thought, maybe one of the opposition leaders should be making that visit.

Famous Five on Parliament Hill

Writers’ Retreat/Turning Leaves

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i spent the weekend at a writers’ retreat—Turning Leaves—at the Fern Resort on beautiful Lake Couchiching. Writescape, a joint enterprise of Ruth E. Walker and Gwynn Scheltema who produced the event and taught. http://writescape.ca/writescape/

The resort itself is old, turn of the nineteenth century old, but with modern amenities, at least in the section we inhabited. The spacious room assigned to me overlooked the long breakwater out into the lake, and the ducks and geese that lived within the calm waters. It faced west, with glorious sunsets.

I have stayed in resorts that promised a fireplace in every room, only to be disappointed by the ersatz fire with its electrically-produced flames. Not this time. A genuine log-burning fireplace, with supplied artificial(and therefore easily started) logs.

Otherwise—clean, comfortable, spacious. My only quibble concerned the lack of electrical outlets for my various electronic devices. I solved that one by unplugging the clock, substituting my phone. It has a reliable alarm clock!

We met in the same building which provided a boardroom and a spacious living room(yet another fireplace), supplied with coffee, tea, juices, snacks, comfortable chairs and good lighting.

The package included three meals a day which were delicious and generous. My only complaint would be that the distance from the kitchen to our small dining room meant some dishes arrived, not cool but not hot either.

Poet and author Jonathan Bennett filled in at last minute for a scheduled guest speaker Barry Dempster. He spoke on point of view, a subject I find very interesting as was the discussion that followed. He also read some of his own work, including his award-winning poetry and answered questions about the writing life.

What else—free writing time, lots of it; workshops which we could attend, or not; discussions at meal times with other writers; the privilege of talking with Gwynn and Ruth.

Writescape. What a resource for writers.

Harper’s Crime Bill according to Texas

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Texas conservatives reject Harper’s crime plan – Canada – CBC News.

If you missed this article on the CBC news website, have a look. According to the Texans who have “been there, done that,” incarceration on the scale Mr. Harper is planning will cost billions of dollars and won’t work. That’s right. No decrease in crime. No decrease in drug use. What works? Treatment of drug addicts, outside of the prison system.

I don’t want to pay huge amounts to build new prisons, incarcerate countless young people and have nothing to show for it at the end but regret as expressed by these Texans, Republican to the core.

“Marc Levin, a lawyer with an anti-tax group called Right on Crime, argues that building more prisons is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“We’ve see a double-digit decline in the last few years in Texas, both in our prison incarceration rate and, most importantly in our crime rate,” says Levin.

“And the way we’ve done it is by strengthening some of the alternatives to prison.””

I just don’t get it. I can understand the Tories not being swayed by the sociological, psychological and moral arguments, but thought they would accept the economic one. I thought they were supposed to be pragmatic, bottom line guys. Just ideologues, the bunch of them.

Why do we have to go down this well-worn path to failure?

Writing

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I’ve started on a project suggest by James Scott Bell in his book Plot and Structure in the Write Great Fiction series from Writers Digest Books. Essentially it’s a method for internalizing plot structure. it involves reading and then analyzing the structure of six novels of a type you would like to write. It will take time away from the actual writing of the sequel to The Facepainter Murders. It’s close to completion, but will need a rewrite for the second (or 10th) draft. I tend to revise as I go along, but I think, after reading Bell’s book, that I should consider just writing, and revising with a second draft of the whole thing. That is for the next book, however.

If you’re a writer or want to be one and haven’t looked at this series of books on writing, I’d recommend it.

Our lovely fall resurgence of summer seems to be over. The temperature is falling and so is the rain. A good time to begin my reading.

Another plan is to catalogue the books in this house and they are everywhere. Fortunately, I have a program on my Mac, called Delicious Library 2, that uses the InSight camera to read the bar codes on the books and record them in a library format.

I was glad to see that the Saudi King had the good sense to rein in the driving police or whoever they are that wanted to flog that woman in Saudi who dared to ?!drive a car. How subversive. And how sad that so many countries can’t or won’t understand that they and their people will never advance while keeping more than half their population unengaged.

Sakineh is still in prison. Please sign the petition. http://freesakineh.org/

Science Advances.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/subatomic-particle-may-travel-faster-than-the-speed-of-light/article2176893/

The above article in the Globe and Mail tells us the exciting—if true—news that scientists have now created a particle that moves faster than the speed of light. For those of us who are impaired in our knowledge of physics, this news brings a sense that the world will somehow change, even as our understanding of it does. And perhaps it will. If objects, albeit at this point neutrinos, can move faster than the speed of light, what does it imply for science-fiction concepts such as time travel and teleportation. And what about weapons? It seems that every advance in pure science brings in its wake those who choose to use the new knowledge or technology to create ever more efficient ways to kill their fellow creatures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/13gene.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=mv

This article in the New York Times tells of a break-through of a hopeful sort. Scientists who used their knowledge of a killer—the AIDS virus—and used it to construct a weapon of a different sort, this one loaded with genes that will seek out and destroy cancer cells, in this case the B cells of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The article has an excellent explanation and graphics.

I think the authors downplay the risks of the treatment. It is no small matter to have all your B cells destroyed and live dependent on infusions of gammaglobulin to fight everything from hepatitis to the common cold. On the other hand, to have these little T cell grenades, reduced in number once they have done their job, but waiting, waiting for next evil cancerous cell to appear, must be comforting. The treatment itself, once the first days of fever and racking chills while the battle ensues are over, seems benign, with no side effects save for the long range one of susceptibility to infection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27paper.html?ref=health

Another outside the box thinker. Dr. George Whitesides has manipulated the science of microtubules and miniaturization to create a laboratory on a piece of blotting paper no larger than a postage stamp. This was done with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This technology has the potential to put testing into the field far from the conventional laboratories and indeed into the hands of the patients and other users, i.e. farmers. Yes, farmers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27sari.html

And finally a low-tech solution that any woman in a sari-wearing nation could use to keep her family safe from cholera and other water-borne illnesses. The sad part of the article is the drop-off in use over time if there is no outside reinforcement. However there was a 25% increase in those who had not been trained to use the sari now filtering their water.

This same information appeared also in 2010 http://mbio.asm.org/content/1/1/e00034-10.full

Toronto Taxes

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I live in a small town in Ontario, part of a so-called city. The taxes on our home are easily twice that of those homes with similar values in North York, as far as I can determine from real estate listings. So I know about paying taxes and worrying where all the money is going.

I would welcome a KPMG review in my city, especially if it found that yes indeed, all the money was needed and wasn’t being wasted, as apparently the firm found in Toronto.

What is upsetting is listening to the Ford brothers, who seem to planning to turn the city into a gutted version of itself, in order to “save taxpayers money.” Never mind that the taxpayers didn’t elect them to save money, but to eliminate the waste. The citizens seemed to like their city and their services; they just thought, because Rob Ford told them so, that it was riddled with excess.

Today, the news reports that “buy-outs” of police or library workers, will help cut this 10% the mayor is demanding from the budgets of these services. Check out this story in the Globe and Mail for the numbers.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/toronto-could-lose-400-police-officers-to-buyouts/article2158774/

It seems odd to me that first the mayor decided that there should be a 10% cut. I’m not sure why—just a nice round number I suppose—and then all the departments had to find areas to cut cost without cutting service. So I suppose that means that all the workers will have to spend 10% more time at work to make up for their lost co-workers. How likely is that? Or have the extra 10% been bone-idle all this time?

At the same time, if the Fords can find a way to spend money to help the BIG developers, and play Lego with the city—ferris wheel indeed—, then that’s the way they choose, and money be damned. If I were a resident of Toronto I’d be annoyed at having all the money spent to ensure environmentally sound and citizen-friendly development wasted because some junior politician decides that he knows better. And have to pay all that money for environmental assessments again because the plans have been changed.

Did someone elect Doug Ford co-mayor or maybe king of Toronto when I wasn’t looking? How can an official elected by just one area make decisions for the city because he’s brother of the mayor?

It’s too bad the election is so far away. Perhaps the council will decide that the emperor has no clothes in time to save the city.

Jack’s Death

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It seemed as though an old friend had died, even though I had never met him, never seen him except on television, knew only the public man, with his smile and his civilized approach to politics. I think that’s what I valued most about him: his civilized approach, his belief that we, collectively can do better, can be better than we are at present. And his great good humour, especially in the House of Commons, at a time when the general level of debate was wretched, and mean-spirited. We have lost a fine man.

I thought he was one election away from being Prime Minister.

Summer, cont.

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Summer:

Gardening: Our hot, very hot and mostly dry summer continues. The garden, all except the roses is loving it, since we are able to water it from the river that flows past our home. The roses fear they have been transplanted to the deep South and have shut down production until more reasonable conditions return. Daylilies, hostas, echinacea, clematis and blue mallow are the stars of the moment.

I planted delphinums and staked them moments before a battering thunderstorm went through, so they are standing and about to bloom. I understand they are short-lived, so I will buy more next year to ensure a good clump.

Writing: Finally the last revisions are done, and the Facepainter has gone off to be set for paper production. Meanwhile, I’m at work on the sequel. A new character has stepped forward and I have to find something for her to do.

Do you know the organization called Great Courses. They finally have released a dedicated Canadian catalogue and some of the professors will be Canadian as well. Find them at http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ I followed one of their courses called Building Great Sentences, and now I’m doing a 30 lecture series on Analysis and Critique, How to engage and write about anything. The lecturer is excellent, my only quibble being that the lecture ends too soon.

Italy: We’re talking with our travelling companions about a trip in the fall of 2012 that would see us spending a few days in Venice, while they celebrate their fortieth anniversary, and then a road trip to Vienna, where we spend a few days to a week.

I’ve been studying Italian, through Rosetta Stone for several years now, with a year’s break to learn some rudimentary Spanish. I began again at the beginning with Italian and now approach the end of the third dvd. I received four and five at Christmas so I will press on. Learning a language, besides good for travelling, is supposed to be good for brain health.

Politics: Very sad news about Jack Layton. To be struck down like that in his moment of achievement is truly tragic.

What is going on with the Americans? They are just recovering from an economic disaster and now want to plunge into another one. Where are the adults?

That’s about it: writing, gardening, learning. Retirement is great!