Celebrate and Mourn

Yesterday, two young women in their twenties captured the attention of Newfoundlanders. 23-year-old swimmer Katarina Roxon returned home from the Rio Paralympics with a gold medal to a hero’s welcome and a highway named in her honour. And 20-year-old Hailey Baker took her own life several months after a highly-publicized car accident that was clearly no accident but a cry for help.

I’m not sure why these two young women’s faces are juxtaposed so strongly in my mind, except that their names frequently turned up within a few minutes of each other in yesterday’s news. And maybe because I teach young adults and I’m the parent of two young adults, I never stop thinking about both best-case and worst-case scenarios.

Best case: your child, born with a physical disability as well as a stunning natural athletic talent, overcomes all hardships, perseveres through difficulties, and brings honour to her country while achieving personal success.

Worst case: your child, struggling with mental illness, spends years seeking help and support through the health care system, and finally dies by her own hand, one more victim of mental illness.

Two young lives: both beautiful, valuable, full of potential. Like so many others. One an inspiration, the other a tragedy.

What’s the takeaway here? Why does the image of those two faces side-by-side haunt me so much? Is the lesson that maybe it’s easier, maybe society offers more support, if you’re born with part of an arm missing than if you have borderline personality disorder? Maybe. Some people have both physical disabilities AND mental illness. Some have neither, and still struggle.

I also know you can’t simplify people into representatives of groups. Not every physically disabled person is going to win a Paralympic gold medal, and why should they? Katarina Roxon is an athlete and presumably would have been a great swimmer with or without a left arm. As a disabled person, her job on earth is not to be an inspiration for the rest of us. She’s living her life: it just happens to be one that involves having a gold medal around her neck.

Not every person with mental illness dies by suicide (thank God). But too many do. And too many of those, like Hailey Baker, feel (and their families and friends feel) that they’re not getting the help and support they need when they go looking for it in our health care system. There’s a message for the rest of us there, for sure, and it seems that Hailey Baker, after media attention focused on the story of her car accident, wanted to share that message the world. But again, Hailey didn’t live her life intending for its end to be a lesson to the rest of us. I’m sure that’s not what those who loved her wanted for her.

Young lives lost too soon break my heart. Young people accomplishing great things inspire me. But everyone lives out their own story, and almost everyone has a team of family, friends, teachers and others supporting and cheering for them. Some stories feature mountaintop moments like Olympic medals — most don’t. Some stories end tragically and too soon — most don’t (again, thankfully).

I guess my only lesson here is: cherish the young people you love, whether they’re your kids, grandkids, students, neighbours, whatever. Help and support them when they need it. Cheer for their successes and share their struggles, if they’ll let you. We can’t always know why one person’s story is an inspiration and another’s is a tragedy. Maybe most of us, at any moment, have the potential to be either, especially those who are still young with so much of the tale still unwritten.

This week we celebrate Katarina,  and we mourn Hailey. And we celebrate and mourn the young people we love. We hope for the best; we fear the worst. We don’t stop loving and cheering and crying.

The (Part-Time) Writing Life

It’s the second of September. Summer holidays are over and new school year begins next week.

So, that happened.

I have mixed feelings about September. I regret the passing of warm summer weather, which I love so much. Long afternoons for hiking. Weekends swimming and canoeing at the cabin. Being able to walk at night in a short-sleeved T-shirt, eating ice-cream. I love summer.

That said, I also love teaching, and I look forward to seeing last year’s students and meeting new ones. I like my job enough that I don’t dread September, but I always want to hang on a little longer to summer.

I think most teachers feel that way. But for me there’s the added twist that, from September to June, writing novels is my part-time gig, sometimes downgraded to my hobby. Teaching’s what I do full-time, the job that occupies many of my waking hours and brings in a steady paycheque.

In July and August, I’m a full-time writer.

That’s not to say that I write eight hours a day. Does anyone? I don’t think I could even imagine writing eight hours a day! I don’t have the attention span for that. But during the summer months, I define myself primarily as a writer. It occupies the space in my time and thoughts that normally gets filled up with teaching.

Now that my kids are older teens with their own activities and summer jobs, my summer mornings almost all started the same way. By eight o’clock most mornings, I’d be in my favourite chair at my favourite coffee shop, enjoying this view.

Most days this summer, the work that occupied me was editing the manuscript of my novel Most Anything You Please — either in hard copy or on the computer. Sometimes the task of the day was research or writing new sections — or even writing a bit on a whole new project.

Usually in the afternoon I’d go do something else, like running messages or going for a hike, but there were some lovely afternoons in July when the weather was perfect and I had a hard-copy manuscript to go through (meaning I could work outdoors without worrying about computer-screen glare). Then I moved my office to the back yard and enjoyed this view.

As September brings cooler temperatures and more rigid schedules I often find myself wondering: would I enjoy being a full-time writer year round? Would life without a day job be as appealing when the afternoons involved cold winds and slushy sidewalks instead of scenic hikes and backyard lemonade? A life in which I have leisure to write as much as I want is always linked, for me, with sunny days and long warm evenings. It’s much more appealing to get away with writer friends for a four-day retreat to put in some intensive final edits on a book (which I also did this summer) when you’re enjoying a lovely country house with sunshine pouring in through the windows, or working on deck with the sight, sound and smell of the ocean to accompany your efforts.

I also wonder if I’d have the focus and discipline to make my time productive if I were writing full-time, year round. It seems like a no-brainer that more time to write would produce more and better writing, but maybe the discipline required to cram my creative work into my spare time ten months of the year, with just two months to focus on it full-time, is actually the only thing allowing me to get any work done. I’m very easily distracted and I’m a great time-waster, especially since they went and invented the internet. Maybe with more time to write, I’d just waste more of it on social media, or playing games of Lexulous online.

It’s not a decision I’m likely to face anytime soon. Maybe in six years or so, when both these teenagers have gotten themselves some kind of a college education and (perhaps) moved out, I’ll think about life as a full-time writer — but for now, that paycheque is pretty essential, so I think I’ll keep showing up to work from September to June, and writing in the moments in between.

Summer, I’ll miss you.

Seven Things Newfoundlanders Say in Summer

We have lots of summer traditions in our beautiful province. Some people go camping, some people go trouting, some go out cod jigging during the food fishery, some go to the cabin and drink, some just go to the cabin (like us). But the one tradition that unites all Newfoundlanders throughout the summer months is talking about the weather.

Of course, this tradition also unites us all the rest of the year. But summer weather offers some unique things to discuss.

It was a large day when I went hiking in Maddox Cove earlier this week. And who’d want to live anywhere else?

First, some terms and definitions:

Summer: Never mind what the calendar says: if a Newfoundlander tells you something’s happening “in the summer” they mean it’s happening during the months of July and/or August. June does not count, although some may stretch the definition to include the last week of June after school gets out. And if you were going to do it during the summer, it had better be done by Labour Day. September is nearly always a very pleasant month here, but nobody considers it part of summer.

Hot: This term has a different meaning in Newfoundland than in some other parts of North America. In other places it is common to complain about “the heat” or “how hot it is,” usually when temperatures get above about 32 degrees Celsius (90 Farenheit). As this never occurs in Newfoundland, “hot” weather is not something to complain about (with rare exceptions noted below). “Hot” means any temperature between 20-30C (about 70-85 F) and it is what we hope for, long for, plan for, enjoy when we have it and curse when it doesn’t come.

There are numerous other terms relevant to Newfoundland summer (e.g. mauzy, RDF, “a large day,” etc.) but those will have to wait for another entry.

There are some comments you’ll hear accompanying particular weather patterns during the “summer” months here. To understand these comments you need to know that while statistics will tell you that 59% of Newfoundlanders are Protestants, 37% are Catholics and 4% either have no religious affiliation or follow another recognized world religion, there is a deeper reality. 100% of Newfoundlanders also practice a more ancient, atavistic religion. We do not exactly worship, but we certainly acknowledge and fear, the Weather Gods. We rarely speak of them, but these nameless, faceless deities control our lives, and much of our conversation is directed towards appeasing them, praising them, and, most importantly, assuring them that we never take their rare moments of generosity for granted.

1. “It don’t look like we’re going to get no summer at all this year.” This statement is made during any stretch of cold, foggy or rainy weather that occurs before we get a stretch of warm, sunny weather. Newfoundlanders can start saying this as early as mid-June, conveniently forgetting that every June of their entire lives has been cold, foggy and rainy. If this pattern, also known as “caplin weather” after the small fish who allegedly like it for spawning, persists into July, this comment will become more frequent and doleful, reflecting the deep-seated belief that some year, summer will actually not arrive.The phrase suggests a fatalistic acceptance of the Weather Gods’ whims, assuring them we will be able to handle it if they withdraw summer entirely. If the fear that we’ll get no summer at all persists for most of July, we will likely make news headlines across North America with our tongue-in-cheek response (see the “arrests” of weathermen Snodden and Sheerr in July 2015).
2. “Well, that was our summer.” Invariably said by someone on the evening of the first July day the temperature hits above 20F and the sun shines. See above-noted deep-seated fear that summer will not arrive. This is immediately followed by the fear that it will only last one day. Again, the goal is to make it clear to whatever shadowy powers control the weather that we know we’re lucky to get even one good day.
3. “This is our one good week, I s’pose.” Any stretch of good weather (i.e., sunshine and temperatures above 20) will elicit this response. Again, it is considered bad luck to express any optimism; we must always assure the Weather Gods that we know they are capricious and their favour is fleeting.
4. “Sure the summer is over after Regatta Day.” Regatta Day — to the best of my knowledge, the only weather-dependent civic holiday anywhere — is the first Wednesday in August, or the first fine day after that. (Two caveats: this only applies to the St. John’s area, and in this case “fine” means not sunny and warm, but calm and windless, which is even less likely in St. John’s. The Regatta is a rowing race, although the attendant carnival on the lakeshore is a bigger attraction than the races for many townies).
   The common belief that summer ends on Regatta Day insulates us against disappointment in case of a cold, rainy August, and assures the Weather Gods that any nice days we do get in August will be treated as a gift rather than a right. No sense of entitlement here!
5. “We’ll pay for this next winter.” This is said anytime three good days have occurred consecutively, and reflects the believe that the Weather Gods, as vengeful pagan deities, will exact payment in the form of an unusually harsh winter.
6. “My blessed, we’ll die with the heat.” While some Newfoundlanders, myself included, refuse on principle to ever complain about our rare hot days, others will utter this type of statement as soon as the temperature hits 25C (77F) — or the humidity makes it feel like it’s above 25. Vigorously fanning themselves and moaning as they toss about in bed, they will profess themselves anxious for the chilly weather that will be back all too soon.
7. “Sure, who’d want to live anywhere else?” A perfect Newfoundland summer day is one where the temperature is in the low to mid 20s (that’s the 70s for you Americans), the sun shines in a cloudless sky, and a gentle but steady breeze blows, keeping the air fresh. (Here in St. John’s that kind of day is always accompanied by a breeze from the southwest; I’m not sure if different wind directions bring good weather in other parts of the province. I didn’t do Geography in high school).
   That probably sounds idyllic to those of you who live in hotter climates, doesn’t it? We get maybe (in a good year) 21 days like that a year — that’s three weeks, but not three consecutive weeks. 21 or so days scattered throughout the months of July and August. Sometimes one comes early, in June, or lingers late in September. So that perfect summer day sounds idyllic to us, too, during the other 49 weeks of the year when it’s cold, rainy, and foggy.But here’s the great thing about Newfoundlanders: we have terrible memories. When that one beautiful day comes along, even if it’s been preceded by two solid weeks of fog, we forget that we were ever miserable. And we get out and enjoy it. You will never see more happy people outdoors in shorts and tank tops than you will on a warm day in St. John’s. And at the end of a perfect day, whether we’re around the campfire or the barbecue, sitting by the lake or on our back deck, we’ll sigh and say, “Sure, who’d ever want to live anywhere else?”The Weather Gods may hate us most of the time, but at least they can’t say we’re ungrateful.

I Am Not Throwing Away My Shot

In my ongoing series of “Trudy discovers entertainment phenomena that everyone else already discovered ages ago,” I’ve recently become COMPLETELY OBSESSED with the soundtrack for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. I’ve heard people online raving about this innovative hip-hop musical based on the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (lesser known than the other founding fathers because unlike Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison et al, he never got to be President). The musical is famous not only for bringing history to life and hip-hop to Broadway, but for re-imagining the key characters in the American Revolution as a more diverse cast made up mostly of people of colour. 

Like most fans of the soundtrack album, I won’t be seeing this famously sold-out show live in Broadway anytime soon … I will be seeing it in eleven months, as I managed to snare tickets for myself and my similarly-obsessed teenaged daughter for May 2017. By that time most of the original cast, including creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, will have moved on to other roles. But a similarly brilliant cast of musical theatre stars will take the show’s infectious melodies and intelligent lyrics into the future, and we will be there to see it, and I’m excited about that.

There’s so much to say about Hamilton— why people are so obsessed with it, why I’m so obsessed with it. The massive popularity of this show has excited a lot of comment regarding what it says about musical theatre, hip-hop, politics, American identity, diversity, and so many other things that I am interested in but may not know a lot about. So I’m just going to talk about the one thing I know: writing, specifically creative writing about history.

Hamilton, among so many other things, is a brilliantly crafted piece of literature, which is probably why Miranda won a Pulitzer Prize for writing it. The rapid-fire, often rapped lyrics are intricate and intelligent, and if (like me and most people) you’re introduced to the musical via the soundtrack album rather than via the stage performance, you have the luxury of listening over and over, replaying and re-hearing until you catch all the nuances. Musicals always play with musical motifs — a repeated thread of melody that accompanies a character throughout the story, used in different ways for different songs and scenes — but Hamilton adds an extraordinary level of literary motif, too.

Take, for example, the song “My Shot” (which is currently my alarm on my phone so I can wake up to its inspiring lyrics every morning). The real Alexander Hamilton is probably most famous for (possibly, depending on what you believe about the debated historical evidence) “throwing away his shot,” i.e. deliberately firing to miss in his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. In writing Hamilton’s songs, Miranda plays with this phrase in every possible way, spins its meaning in a dozen different directions as he builds a portrait of an ambitious young man determined not to “throw away his shot,” not to miss a chance either at personal success or service to his adopted country. Over and over, whenever given a chance to jump into the fray, Hamilton vows not to throw away his shot — at fame, at fortune, at leaving a legacy — and yet every repetition of that phrase points us forward to the inevitable conclusion, when he will throw away his shot, and leave that highly ambiguous legacy.

In Which I Insult Shakespeare and Adore Tom Hiddleston

I’m still struggling a bit with what this blog actually is, in its tenth year, but this week I’ve decided it’s a cutting-edge review of all that’s new and hot in entertainment. So I’m bringing you a review of a three-year-old production of a 420-year-old play. Because I’m on top of things.

Lately I’ve started watching The Hollow Crown, the BBC’s TV adaptation of Shakespeare’s history plays. Apart from Richard III, the histories are often underappreciated and performed less often than the Bard’s tragedies and comedies. Sometimes, this obscurity is deserved. It may be unpopular to say this, but while a lot of Shakespeare’s plays earned him his reputation as the greatest English writer, others were … not so great. Every writer has hits and misses, and I’d venture to say that the history plays contain a large share of Shakespeare’s misses.

That said, The Hollow Crown (as much as I’ve seen of it so far) does great work with uneven subject material. Fabulous British actors, lavish sets and costumes, movie-quality production values — these adaptations are a joy to watch. So far I’ve seen Henry IV, Parts I & II. Those two plays really encapsulate the best and the worst of Shakespeare, and as a bonus, you get to watch and listen to Tom Hiddleston for four hours.

I love, love, love the play Henry IV, Part I. I studied it for my senior honours project in college, so I spent the better part of a year reading and analyzing that play and its sources, and then I taught it in high school for four years. The next school I taught at didn’t have that play on the curriculum so it got put on the back shelf of my mind, and I haven’t read or watched it for well over two decades.

It’s such a rich and wonderful story (based considerably more on legend than on history): the aging King Henry IV, struggling to hold onto the throne he usurped from Richard II, is in despair as his son, Prince Hal, wastes his time with disreputable companions in London taverns and brothels. It features Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s greatest characters, as Hal’s elderly partner-in-crime, and Harry “Hotspur” Percy, as an antagonist who is not merely the bad guy but also has genuine wit, depth and complexity. Prince Hal finally steps up and does the princely thing by defeating Hotspur in hand-to-hand combat, possibly saving his father’s thone in the process. The transformation of Prince Hal from wastrel to heroic prince, complete with the complicated web of motivations that drives him, makes this place endlessly watchable and anayzable (which is how I ended up spending my whole senior year in college on it).

Tom Hiddleston does a brilliant job with this play, selling the viewer completely on the fun-loving party boy, the dutiful prince, and the conflicted young man who says he is just biding his time till he reveals his true, kinglike identity — but is he just deceiving himself? Or us? Jeremy Irons is similarly brilliant as King Henry IV, and Joe Armstrong, the actor playing Hotspur, who I haven’t seen before, does a great job with this complex character. I’ve seen lots of criticism online from people who didn’t like Simon Russell Beale’s Falstaff (again, I’m not familiar with the actor’s other work) but I didn’t have a problem with it — he nails the crucial scene, where Falstaff and Prince Hal take turns role-playing Hal and the King, and Hal’s unexpectedly serious reply foreshadows his eventually rejection of Falstaff and all the old man represents. To sum up: it’s a rich, wonderful play with great characters, and this is a beautiful adaptation of it.

Then I watched Henry IV, Part Two, which is just a complete train wreck. And it’s not the fault of the Hollow Crown director, producers or actors — this one is all on Shakespeare.

It’s the third week in April…

Three weeks ago, I was on vacation in Florida. This was me.

Today I am back home in St. John’s. This is me.

We had a record snowfall today — somewhere between 40 and 50 centimetres. We also had a snow day — surely the last of the season! I can’t help but wish I were back in Florida.

Closer Home

This is a pretty cool post for me to be able to do, because I love to talk about the successes that my writer-friends have had, and Kerry is one of the writers I’ve been friends with the longest. Our relationship goes back to when we were both young aspiring writers living a few houses away from each other on a cul-de-sac in Oshawa, Ontario, and used to go for long walks discussing the books we wanted to write. We’ve kept in touch during all the years since, and Kerry has gone on to release a fantasy trilogy and a paranormal thriller under the name Kerry Schafer. Now she’s branching out in a new direction: this week her novel Closer Home comes out under the name Kerry Anne King. Since my novel What You Want has also just come out in paperback, and since writing women’s fiction is a bit of a change of direction for both of us, we are interviewing each other on our blogs today. I’m excited to tell you a bit more about Kerry and her new book. Read a quick synopsis of the book below, then continue on for my interview with Kerry.

When Lise Redding’s estranged sister, country-pop star Callie Redfern, is killed during a publicity stunt, the small-town music teacher is dragged from her quiet life into the spotlight.

Lise hadn’t spoken with Callie in ten years, ever since Callie’s betrayal split them apart, so she’s shocked to discover that she’s inherited her sister’s massive estate. Not only that, but Lise is now the guardian of her sixteen-year-old niece, Ariel, to whom she’s practically a stranger.

Overwhelmed by grief and her new responsibilities, Lise thinks things couldn’t get worse. But overnight she becomes the paparazzi’s latest obsession. Suddenly she and her longtime friend Dale are plastered over the front pages of the tabloids. Desperate to escape both the media and her memories, Lise sets off with Ariel on a search for the girl’s father. Yet instead of granting Lise a reprieve, the quest brings her face-to-face with long-buried secrets. Only by learning to forgive will she be able to find her way back home.

Trudy: When we first met nearly 30 (!!!) years ago, you were working on a fantasy novel. Since then you’ve published a fantasy trilogy and a paranormal thriller. Is writing women’s fiction something completely new for you?

Kerry: It can’t really be thirty years. You’re a writer – please tell me you’re making that up! I am not going to do the math myself. The answer to your question is, technically, yes. Writing a novel in the women’s fiction genre was actually my agent’s idea, and something new for me. She pointed out that all of my books feature strong women characters, and that I seemed to be passionate about that. As usual, she was right, and making the transition was very natural for me.

Trudy: Your Kerry Schafer books all have what I’d consider a dark side — an unflinching look at things that are terrifying and dangerous. Is there any dark side to Kerry Anne King and Closer Home?