Wanted: Spring Gardeners.

Did we die with winter? Are we still deep into the earth's soil, dreaming green? It is spring, you bloggers! Time to pop up again. With new energy, new ideas. Cultivate seeds into tiny green sprouts in your green house selves. We need stories. Stories born anew. New tales. Growing tales. Sun and rain tales. Colourful tales. Funny ones. Ridiculous ones. Tales with tails. Heads too. Or just middles. 'slong's it keeps us communicating. My garden is full of sunny daffodils. I added black earth to display them in all their glory. Planted flowers and beans and corn seeds. Pots and earth plots are being readied to be filled with seeds , and young plants. Minds are being readied for young stories. Where are the gardeners?

Wild Thing

Writing is a Physical Act...

So you think writing is a cerebral activity, huh? Think again. Well, don't think - do.

I've been paying to be tortured lately (okay, okay, let's not go there....) by a physiotherapist. Yesterday, I think she did a handstand on one of my pec muscles. A "minor" muscle that she has decided is the real culprit in my shoulder woes. A few months ago my "typing" arm rebelled and refused to move at all. I looked like a chicken with my elbow pinned to my side. I've worked through all that, but now am left without a certain range of motion that I want to regain in order to best enjoy kayaking this summer (more about that later).

Okay, what's this got to do with writing beyond my not being able to type at the keyboard? Well, I've learned I have a repetitive injury caused by using a mouse, hunching at the computer, sitting improperly, and over-using shoulder muscles instead of using back muscles. I'm supposed to get up out of the chair and dance around and do wild crazy actions with my shoulders when I write. So I pass that writing tip along to you.

I'm also supposed to remember to press down my shoulder blades, and tuck in my chin in an unflattering posture. And I have a whole slew of teensy weensy silly exercises to do at the gym alongside the guys and gals lifting those really big weights. There's me, sitting on a weight bench and rolling one of those big exercise balls (straight from the old TV series "The Prisoner") in little tiny circles with my palm...

Okay, now the real reason for writing. A few months ago I posted a piece about bidding on an eBay kayak, so that those of you so inclined might get away from your computers, and join me on the river. I had decided I "needed" another kayak to add to my collection so that I could put you guys (one by one, and not all at the same time) in a stable light rec boat that wouldn't tip unless you did something really silly, like standing up and dancing in it. I lost the bidding war.

Anyway, yesterday I bid on another brand new eBay boat and it's mine! I pick it up in a few days. So, anyone want to join me (and BB too) for a short paddle on the river or at a conservation area sometime? And if your body rebels, paddling or writing, I know a really good torturer, er, physiotherapist...

-Xena, aka Marianne

Writers - Be Yourselves! You just never know...

We have a new Canadian writer star up here in the Frozen North - Paul Haggis, born in London, Ontario, winner of best original screenplay at this year's Academy Awards for Crash which also won Best Picture. He was also nominated for the script of Million Dollar Baby, which he also wrote. Which won Best Picture last year.

Haggis says he never believed either Crash or Million Dollar Baby would make it to the silver screen because his topics were offbeat and even slightly depressing.

"When I wrote Million Dollar Baby and Crash, I didn't believe either one of them would ever get made," he says. "Crash - I figured no one would ever make it. It had all these characters. It was about race relations and fear and intolerance. Who'd want to see that? I thought my grandchildren would read these scripts and go 'Oh look, grandpa tried to get into the movies? Isn't that cute?' "

However, Crash and other serious best-film contenders of recent days came at a time when society began looking inward, he said. "I think audiences are ready now. We're in a time of war, and you either go in one of two directions," Haggis said. "You either head off and escape, or you start asking questions. And all the terrific films this year asked important questions about who we are, and I guess that's what we were trying to do as well."

Haggis' next project is a film entitled Flags of our Fathers. It is based on the story of six men who raised the US flag on Iwo Jima during the Second World War. Haggis wrote the script. I'm definitely going to see it. After I see Crash.

The point of this BLOG is to say to all you wonderful writers out there, be yourself, write from the heart, and don't be put off your path by anything if you believe in what you are writing. Because that's what makes good writing. Heart and soul. Your own special variety.

LuLu

Who Invented the Boycott?

In the 1800s much of the land in Ireland was owned by absentee English landlords. These landlords would appoint a local agent to administer their lands, setting a fixed income (rent) to be remitted. Naturally, the rents were quite high and Irish tenants were hard pressed. The state of British law was such that tenants were unable to get redress for injustices. The high rents meant that there were many evictions. This, combined with self-conscious Irish nationalism, led to much unrest, the seeds of later violence and terrorism.

In the late 1870s the leadership of the Irish Home Rule Party in the British Parliament was assumed by a Protestant nationalist named Charles Stewart Parnell. In this period, Parnell was masterful at manipulating Parliament (a balance of power situation) to make British governance of Ireland both difficult and near the top of the agenda.

"However, though a fanatic in the cause of Irish independence, Parnell was against the more extreme forms of violence and terrorism. The technique he recommended in dealing with tenant evictions was social ostracism rather than the barn burning, cattle mutilation, and murder adopted on a large scale by his countrymen. Anyone who assisted an unjust eviction or took over a farm made available by such an eviction was to be treated as a social leper. One of the first victims of this treatment was a land agent named Charles Boycott, whose ostracism added a new word to the English language." (Quote from The Norton History of Modern Europe, 1971 edition, p. 1146.)

Parnell was jailed and became an Irish nationalist martyr, as so many have done since. However, his reputation was later tarnished because of an affair with a married woman, which caused a split within the Home Rule party when he refused to step down as leader.

Truly I Say To You Spring Is Here

There are true signs. Now I am not promising that there won't be snow anymore. I am not promising temperatures won't sink below freezing anymore. And I am not promising there won't be a winterstorm anymore. King Winter likely still has tricks on his sleeve. He is a hard one to defeat. He likes to be all powerful. But undeniably Spring Maiden is here. And Mother Nature knows it.

Early one morning just as the sun was rising...that was this morning, I set out into the slowly thinning mist with my true and faithful friend Simon. For those who may be uninformed, Simon is a dog. A golden retriever.

We went through te woods, where squirrels and birds were awakening. A tricky feat for the feet. Climbing a still icy hill takes concentration. Balancing on uneven icy trails not much better. But like magic, where no people feet have stomped down snow, there is grassy ground, springy and wet to greet those feet, longing to be free, but wisely encased in Wellies.

So you want me to come to the point, you impatient ones. Well walking by the Duck Pond, I heard them. I was pretty sure. My heart skipped a beat. But was I right? I tarried, looked up into the trees but there was no visual sign. And on I went, listening to bird sounds all around, Chickadees, Mourning Doves, Blue Jays, Cardinals, bossy Crows, and the itty bitty chirpings everywhere of Finches and Sparrows. Quite a symphony.

The trail I followed is one I often do. It takes an hour and a half, but this lovely morning I made it last a good two hours, stopping often to see new growths already appearing in sheltered nooks . A saucy Robin ran ahead of me on the path. Then flew up and settled on a backyard fence. And then, and then... I heard it again. Quite distinctly. I looked up, way up, and there was... No, not Rusty, you silly ones who used to watch The Friendly Giant, but the true messenger of spring, a Red Winged Blackbird.

And I saw the beginnings of lilies, those big orange ones, little greenish yellow sprouts sunning near a backyard fence by the creek. And in my own little wilderness yard in front of the house, tiny green sprouts are pushing up, the beginnings of crocusses, daffo-down-dillies and the likes, and miraculously, very astonishing to me, the snowbells that flowered in the mild month of January and got dumped on with snow followed by arctic temperatures, came from under that snow and frost, like it never happened. There they are, slender and beautiful, strong enough to defy King Winter, like true sisters of Spring Maiden.

The mist slowly lifted and slanted sunrays broke through boughs of trees. A beautiful day is born holding in its aura the promise of spring.

Simon now lies outside in front of the house. Greeting all that pass by. His coat is shimmering golden in the sun. True gold. Life and warm. Nothing like a yellow metal kind of gold.

And here is a wish for a good weekend to all you bloggers, from a spring feverish Wild Thing.

Afghanistan

My fascination with Afghanistan began in the 1970’s. Centuries ago Kabul was a cradle of civilization where Buddhists, Christians and Muslims mixed in every day life. Universities of higher learning existed in Kabul before Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence River. Tolerance and education is a small footnote in the timeline of Afghanistan. Its geographical location was an intersection where cultures have collided for over two thousand years.

Contrary to what some Afghan historians would have us believe, Afghanistan was not converted to Islam the moment the Prophet breathed the word. Conversion was a slow and brutal process that took a 1,000 years. So its history is interesting because it involves the unravelling of a highly sophisticated civilization. Kabul the once tolerant society existed before our ancestors had yet heard any word of Christianity.

A clash of cultures occurs today not through geography but through our communication technologies. There is a question of whether Canadians should be there or not. The answer for me depends on the mission. If we are there to fight a “War on Terrorism” then the mission is ill designed. If we are in Afghanistan with a small hope of creating the opportunity where tolerance can gain a small foothold then the mission is a noble one. A difficult mission that may succeed or fail. Our intentions define our nature. What is our intent?

BB