Biting the Big Apple

This weekend, Jason and I are off to New York City. He has to go to New Jersey for work, and I’m taking a couple of days to join him for a little kid-free fun and frolic in the big city. And what an auspicious time to go there!!

Twenty-odd years ago, I made my first trip to New York to meet up with my parents for American Thanksgiving weekend. We had a good time, but my main memory is that I spent the whole weekend terrified of getting mugged.

Five years ago, I made another trip, this time on my own — and didn’t worry at all about getting mugged! I spent two weeks in Brooklyn researching a novel (thank you very much, Newfoundland Arts Council, for making it possible). That novel, By the Rivers of Brooklyn, was a historical saga about three generations of a Newfoundland family and their experience of emigrating to New York.

That manuscript has been down many detours and side-roads since I sat in the Barnes and Noble coffee shop in Brooklyn writing scenes on my ancient laptop in 2003. But I am finally happy to announce that just yesterday the good folks at Breakwater Books made it official — they want to publish By the Rivers of Brooklyn. It will be released in 2009.

With any luck, maybe in a couple of years the book will have found an American publisher and I’ll be going back there to do a reading!! But that’s still far in the future…for now, I’m going to enjoy our celebratory trip to the Big Apple!

BBQ

So, my brief flirtation with paganism — looking for a Weather God to pray to — did not result in a hot sunny day for our Kick Off Summer BBQ yesterday. Guess I learned my lesson about false gods! Can’t rely on those idol promises.

But … it didn’t rain, the clouds were sort of bright, and it was warm enough for the kids to play outside while the adults all sat around inside. We had loads of food, a nice mix of people from all the various walks of our lives, and a good time.

The only good pics are of the kids, since adults sitting around eating and talking doesn’t make for great still photography:

And with that, it is now officially summer at the Cole House. Jason has the day off today and we’re off to swim at the Aquarena, then go see Wall-E.

And So It Begins…

I am, as you probably know, a HUGE fan both of summer vacation, and of summer weather. We had some lovely summer weather earlier this week, though by the time my actual summer holidays started, on Friday, the weather had retreated and it was cold and drizzly again. No matter. I am glad the long summer vacation has begun, both for me and for the kids, and I am living in hope that the weather will return. In fact we are stepping out in faith and planning a backyard barbecue for tomorrow, and I’m wondering if my strict Christian monotheism can be adjusted to include a little prayer to some weather gods.

School got out very late here this year — the kids’ last day was the 26th, while for us teachers it was the 27th. This past Monday was a civic holiday, so we were all off school, and it was hot and sunny and really felt like a foretaste of summer holidays. The rest of the week we went back to school and work, but it was unconvincing and our hearts weren’t really in it — we were already more committed to things like biking down to Moo Moo’s for some ice cream, going to the playground, and making plans for summer activities.

O, Geez!

This weekend I got to do one of my favourite things — enjoy a Sabbath with no particular church responsibilities, so I could curl up Friday night and Saturday afternoon with new issues of my two favourite magazines.

The fact that my two favourite magazines are O, the Oprah Magazine and Geez produces a level of cognitive dissonance that’s jarring even for me, and I sometimes think I’m the queen of cognitive dissonance.

History

Many many years ago, I went to college and majored in History, because it had been my favourite subject in school. People who know me as a writer and English teacher are often surprised by this. In fact, it wasn’t until my third year in university, with a sense of giving in to my inevitable fate, that I changed from an History major, English minor, to a double major in History and English.

I can’t remember ever NOT being fascinated by history. Some of my earliest favourite books were juvenile historical novels such as Sally Watson’s Mistress Malapert. The idea that books (or movies — I was completely obsessed for a while there with the CBC miniseries Riel) could give you a glimpse into what life was like in another era absolutely captivated me. And the academic study of history was no disappointment: while not every history course I took was scintillating, the process of learning about the cause-and-effect that connected those long ago times to the present day intrigued me.

I quickly realized that I didn’t have the level of interest and dedication needed to become a serious historian; I didn’t pursue graduate studies in history. I figured my love of history would be explored through writing historical fiction, and through teaching high-school history.

One of those things has worked out better for me than the other.

Imaginary Love

I am almost done with my current revision of What You Want, the book I drafted in a feverish frenzy earlier this spring. Really, it’s pretty much at the point where I need to print it off and give copies to a few trusted critics to read. But I’m still dawdling, dabbling with it, changing a word here and a word there. Why? I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to leave the world of this book.

Partly this is because, as I explained earlier, this is my favourite part of the process, the one time when the story really comes alive for me. But I think it’s a little more serious than that. I can’t bear to leave this book because once again, I have gone and fallen in love with one of my own characters.

Now, as we know, I do have a long track record of falling in love with imaginary people. But while lots of gals have crushes on movie, TV, and even literary characters … isn’t it, well, a little perverse to fall head-over-heels with a character you made up your ownself, out of whole cloth?

Happy St. Barnabas’ Day!!

OK, so I don’t expect everyone who reads my blog (or really anyone, hardly) to know that June 11 is the feast day of St. Barnabas.  Most Christian readers of my blog are fellow Adventists or evangelicals who are not so much into the saint thing, and presumably my non-Christian friends aren’t so much into saints either.  Even if you’re Catholic or Anglican and actually follow the calendar of feast days and saints’ days and such, you’d have to be pretty hardcore, I think, to celebrate a Biblical footnote like St. Barnabas.

But Barnabas’s day is the one I really do care about, because I’ve sort of adopted him as a personal patron saint.  He’s not actually listed as the patron saint of anything except Cyprus, although apparently he can be invoked for protection against hailstorms.  However, in my unilateral protestant way, I’ve decided Barnabas should be the patron saint of teachers, youth leaders, and anyone who works with at-risk youth, and it is as such that I have adopted him as my personal patron.

Oh We Are the Pathfinders Strong…

I’ve been involved with Pathfinders on and off all my life. That’s Pathfinders, the international youth organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for boys and girls aged 10-15, not be confused with Pathfinders, the level of Girl Guides for ages 12-14. For those not in the know, Pathfinders (and its more recent junior organization, Adventurers, for ages 6-9) is sort of Scout-like or Guide-like in nature, with the same kind of emphasis on Fun Group Activities, outdoorsy stuff, earning honours and badges, and a vaguely paramilitary preoccupation with marching and uniforms. The big differences are that boys and girls co-mingle in Pathfinders (to an appropriate degree, of course!) and that most Pathfinder clubs are made up mainly of Adventist kids. While it may be one more way to segregate our kids from the dangerous “real world” around them rather than just putting them in the local Scouts or Guides, it is an organization that has brought a lot of people a lot of fun and joy over the years.

Sometimes, I have been one of those who has experienced fun and joy in Pathfinders. Not always, but sometimes.

Believe What You Want…

A colleague of mine, for reasons that are not completely clear to me, recently showed his students the movie Zeitgeist.  Now I’m not one to critique a movie I haven’t watched (or a book I haven’t read), but as near as I can figure out from the enthused ravings of a student who said I really needed to see it, it’s a bunch of conspiracy theories ranging from Jesus-never-existed-and-Christianity-is-based-entirely-on-Egyptian-mythology, through The-US-staged-the-911-attacks-to-engender-fear-in-the-masses-and-justify-war-with-Iraq, to OMG-The-US-Federal-Reserve-Bank-controls-EVERYTHING!!!!! 

If there was a unifying thread tying these three premises together, it escaped my student — except perhaps the unifying thread of Open Your Eyes! Don’t Be Deceived! Sinister Forces Are Out To Get You.  All of which just reminds me of this ”protest song” featuring a very young Hugh Laurie and Tony Slattery.

But I’m not interested in a critique of Zeitgeist here; what interested me was how uncritically my student absorbed and believed everything he saw on it.  Largely, I believe, because it fit with the way he already thought.  He likes conspiracy theories; he wants to believe there’s a big evil mastermind pulling the strings.  (He also wants to believe zombies are real, but that’s another story).  It made me think about how easily we’re convinced by things that fit with what we already believe, or want to believe.

Placeholder

This is a placeholder blog. It’s not about any one of the many interesting subjects (mostly parenting-related) that have floated through my mind the last few days as possible interesting blog-topics. Nor is it about:

-the gorgeous, though erratic, spring weather we’re finally getting,

-how slack things are at school because all my students apparently think public exams are No Big Deal and not worth reviewing for, except for the handful of keeners who come regular for whom, because they are keeners and because they come regularly, exams actually are no big deal and they actually don’t need the review,

-how busy things are at home, with end-of-year activities for the kids, Jason down with a cold, much spring cleaning and throwing-out-of-stuff to be done,

-how I’m nearly through another revision of What You Want and still feeling generally happy about it.

Nope, not going to blog about any of that because there just isn’t time and I want to get that last scene of WYW nailed tonight, then get to sleep earlier than I have been. This is just a blog to say I’m still here; I haven’t forgotten you; I will live to blog again!!

Amongst all the rest (which will hopefully provide some promising blog-fodder for the future) I have been reading some good, thought-provoking books though … new reviews up at Compulsive Overreader with more to come in the next day or so.

Back to writing….