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I Love the Library

01 Dec 2011 -

The Words Don't Fit the Picture

The first of December!

Yikes…the countdown begins. Not that we’re going to get all panicky about that right? We’re just going to breathe and take each day as it comes.

Everyone. All together now. Breathe In. Breathe Out. Repeat just like the shampoo directions. Life feels much easier that way, non?

I promise to concentrate on nice slow breathing while walking to the Vancouver Public Library to return a big pile of magazines and a copy of that amazing book, Olive Kitteridge. (I couldn’t find my paperback copy so the library was there to rescue me when I wanted to reread it last week).

I have another book waiting for me that I requested a while back…The Art of Fielding. It comes highly recommended by by Gwen Morrison, my friend and fellow Canadian (though currently living just a little south of the border in Georgia :)

I am looking forward to my walk. It’s a gorgeous crisp winter day out there. The clouds have that textured pebbly appearance that reminds me of a hard-packed sand beach after the tide has gone out; a thing to behold; this lovely beach of a sky.

But more interesting to me now is the fact that I just wrote that previous sentence with two semi-colons. Can you do that? I guess I just did.

But back to that library…aren’t they just the best invention…ever?

I love feeling the buzz of brains when I enter the space. I love seeing young kids hunched over books as they trace each word with a finger, or watching an old woman holding a big book like she’s holding a grandchild, or a young student running his fingers along a shelf of spines; it’s a light-and-sentence-filled space enjoyed by new Canadians and old.

It’s just a big ol’ church where we all are welcome to worship the word. 

 

 

Category: Books, Musings, Photos  Tags: , ,  4 Comments

Mennonite Girl

22 Jun 2011 -

I’d like to introduce my friend Mary Ediger. Mary’s mom and dad were named Margarite and Menno. Clearly we had a few things in common when we met. Both her parents were Mennonite pastors and spent their lives in service to that bigger heavenly plan.

They’re gone now, but Mary has written Mennonite Girl, filled with tales of what it was like to grow up as one of five kids (and often as one of ten kids when all the foster kids were counted) of parents with an income that gave ‘poor as church mice’ a new relevance.

When I met Mary in 1983, she had just driven her rusty Dodge Aspen from Chicago to Mission, BC.  In large measure she did this because she’d met another Mennonite friend, Margo Friesen, who was volunteering in Chicago under the Mennonite Voluntary Service program. Margo assured Mary that her hometown back in British Columbia was a nice place. Margo flew home from Chicago and they soon became roommates and great friends.

And now, here we are, decades later, all of us connected because Mary had a hunch that she belonged out West and had the courage to follow her heart.

But back to her new book…Mary became one of those friends that you could always count on for an interesting story…usually about her unusual childhood, her innovative father and his cobbled-together creations and her mother that could make something out of nothing…and of course, all those kids.

She’s done us all a favour and put all those stories into a collection called Mennonite Girl.

Now I can hear Mary’s voice whenever I open those pages :)

Category: Books, Photos, Writing  Tags: ,  6 Comments

Book Recommendations

15 Mar 2011 -

“We write to taste life twice.” — Anais Nin

As usual, the pile of books is teetering by the bed, the magazines are dogeared and tagged and I’ve bookmarked a thousand things to follow up on…yeh, right. It’s daunting. So instead, I’m taking to heart the quote from the founder of Confucianism, Lao Tzu, who said, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.”

In light of that, I’m not going to recommend a bunch of this and that. This is my one step, a short plug for a very different memoir called[amazon_link id="0609609912" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ] Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck.[/amazon_link] It’s been out for awhile so maybe everyone but me has already read it, but if you haven’t, please add it to your own bedside pile.  I found it riveting.

And it’s not just Martha’s story of surviving her family that got me. More than that was all the background information on the Mormons that grabbed me…especially in light of all that’s going on in Bountiful, British Columbia right now. It’s chilling and creepy stuff. It is not just innocuous young men in suits doing their mission work, though I’m sure there are those innocents too, but there is also a very dark underbelly to those shiny surfaces. All is not as it appears.

And just so I can tick off another book on my list, I’d like to also recommend (now that I’ve apparently become a fiction writer), [amazon_link id="0771041985" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]A Passion for Narrative by Jack Hodgins[/amazon_link].  Great advice using good examples; practical and meaty…like a perfect steak dinner.

Category: Books, Memory, Writing  Tags: , ,  Leave a Comment

Stormy Weather & Dying

09 Mar 2011 -

Davis Bay, BC

Everything changes…

This morning my girlfriend & I headed off for on our Wednesday morning walk into a storm of rain that was wild and windy. And now, here I am in Vancouver only a few hours later and it’s a gorgeous balmy spring day.

This photo was taken on another walk last January when the combination of high tide and windy weather transformed our little seawall into a wild wash.

It’s such a concept… this idea of continuous and constant change. Some changes, like this picture suggests, are rather violent and obvious.

Others, like the fact that everything around us, including ourselves, are, at this very second, in a state of transformation. We are always morphing and pretending that we’re not. It’s a good trick of denial and useful for our daytimers and appointed events, but rather ridiculous too. Each day I plan my routines in the hopes that tomorrow will come because, after all, I’ve written my things-to-do on the appointed day.

I remember visiting my girlfriend years ago. She had a rather interesting mother. Her mom was visiting at her apartment in Vancouver and my friend mentioned that she’d be out the next morning for her hair appointment. Her mother was appalled that she had done such a thing.

 

“Why would you make an appointment?” she asked, ”Jesus is coming.”

I guess it’s just a question of balance. We have to plan like we’re going to live forever and live like we’re going to die tomorrow.

And maybe I should take a break from reading [amazon_link id="0151012741" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Death with Interuptions [/amazon_link]by Jose Saramago…I’ll just pretend I have time to read it tomorrow.

Category: Books, Musings  Tags: , ,  2 Comments

Read an EBook Week

08 Mar 2011 -

March 6th was the start for Read an EBook Week.

And here you thought the only thing that happened in March was St. Paddy’s Day. 

Mark Coker at Smashwords writes about the revolution in publishing, and though it might be a bit of a stretch to start with Egypt’s revolution and move right into publishing, it’s easy to follow how it started him thinking.

I believe the missing piece in all this talk of an ebook ‘revolution’ is that traditional publishing houses have editors, and that vetting and selecting process serves a hugely important function. It weeds out the real schlock. And people, there is some seriously bad schlock on those virtual shelves.

Yes, it’s fun to see your book up and in that cyberstore in an instant, but it often means that there has been too little checking of content. However, we are in the heady days of the beginning of all this and still feeling our way through it. I’m sure we’ll look back on these times like the horse and wagon delivery guy looked back at the introduction of the first car.

Transitions are messy. Which explains why that in-between time of purgatory is seen as a punishment.

I promise my book has been edited. This has now morphed into a shameless promotion piece. My ebook (available for purchase at Amazon and Smashwords is available now :)

After all, it’s Read an EBook Week.

Category: Books, Travel writing, Writing  Tags: , , ,  4 Comments
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