Author: carin

a few things

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

Allyson Latta was right when she suggested I might love what Rebecca Rosenblum is doing over at Rose Coloured (where anyone can join in)—i.e. making a list of Things We Like—because, it just so happens, one of the things I like most of all is making lists.

So here’s mine:

Things I Like—

—  making lists (and repeating myself)

—  ginger snaps with blackberry tea on the patio at the end of the day

—  BBQ’d shrimp and chilled sauvignon blanc on the patio at the end of the day

—  the family in my neighbourhood that are always making dinner together when I stroll past their house

—  seeing into people’s windows, especially in winter with all that coziness inside, especially at dinner time

—  seedless watermelon

—  shadows

—  the letter zed

—  my almond cherry torte recipe that I live in fear of losing so have made several copies but still worry constantly that I’ll lose them

—  Lake Ontario in the dark when the waves are crazy

—  Lake Ontario in the day… any day

—  the summer and winter solstice

—  driving long distances over empty roads, thinking out loud

—  swimming (first choice: lakes; second choice: pool with VERY little chlorine; third choice: oceans without jellyfish or sharks)

—  making soup or spaghetti sauce or anything that requires chopping, stirring, simmering

—  cooking smells in a house

—  sheets and towels and tee shirts from the line

—  a cat snuggled up beside me like a teddy bear

—  sandals

—  the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

—  the [operatic] song from Big Night, first heard while having lunch al fresco at Quail’s Gate Winery

—  the sound of cutlery against plates in that final scene in Big Night

—  goat cheese omelettes with purslane

—  Cat’s Eye, the book

—  Drinking the Rain, by Alix Kates Shulman, which I read almost every year

—  the way insects and animals and birds and trees know exactly what to do

—  choosing well from a menu

—  painting with bold colours

—  discovering a new place in my own ‘hood

—  the word ‘hood

—  beeswax candles

—  walking, hiking, climbing, none of it too strenuously

—  the sight of the Andes from a small plane

—  the colour green, indoors and out

—  people who get excited about possibilities, art and words

—  the smell of dirt in Spring

—  the smell of snow and the way it looks in the sunshine

—  sharpened pencils and fast writing pens

when a tree falls…

~ carin ~ 8 Comments

There are no pictures.

Well, yes, there are, actually, pictures. The morning before we cut down the ancient juniper, I took a few. They’re not great—not meant to be great—and say far less than the expected thousand words. They certainly don’t say that the tree and I spent the better part of twenty years together.

It was already here when we moved in. Already quite mature with a slight tilt, which, a few years later, turned into a near fatal lean that required the installation of a serious rope and pulley system to keep it from keeling right over. The system worked well, but as the tree grew it continued to totter ever more precariously. Eventually branches began to sag and turn brown and the whole thing just seemed to be struggling.

It might even have been considered an eyesore.

Though not by us.

Its only real flaw in our view was the increasing potential for toppling over on the dearest and newest addition to the neighbourhood, a furry Mr. Reilly, who likes to play with chew toys on his lawn in almost the exact spot the behemoth juniper would land if the rope ever gave way.

It was time to think about taking it down.

The truth is it should have come down years ago.

But what year should that have been?

Not the year the cardinals had a nest there. And not the one when the blue jays did. And not in winter when robins [who for some reason no longer fly south] swarm the tree for its berries, which is interesting because there’s no other time I can recall seeing robins do anything en masse. The serviceberries are devoured by one bird at a time. Worms too… one, maybe two robins at the most, wait while I dig over the vegetable bed. But with winter juniper berries, swarms. Maybe because there’s less food to choose from in winter? or maybe because the berries, when fermented in their bellies make a fine schnapps… whatever the reason, they arrive at the juniper tree by the dozens. Thirty, forty birds, easily, at times.

I’ve never managed to capture it on film. You’ll have to trust me.

So now this source of winter food is gone. I didn’t watch the sawing. I said goodbye and thank you and hey, remember all those crazy robins… good times, eh?  And then I went inside and pickled some peppers and made zucchini soup.

I’m glad they left the stump. There was some talk of renting a stump grinder. I counted the rings. Thirty five. Google tells me this is admirable for a tree of its kind.

In a different world, a wilder one, for instance, in a house surrounded by woods or fields instead of sweet furry neighbours, I would have left this tree to die a natural death, to continue keeping the robins drunk and happy all winter, to be the ancestral home to many more feathery generations, to keel over whenever it pleased.

As it is, I miss the view of its gnarly branches from my window. We’ve planted new junipers in its place, smaller ones, young and cute and strong and straight, but as yet, without character. The birds fly right past. I wouldn’t blame them if they stopped and lodged a complaint… but they’re already adapting to the new landscape. And so, I guess, will I.

hi nancy!

~ carin ~ 9 Comments

For all the years I read Nancy Drew, and well beyond, I thought she, Nancy Drew herself, was the author. This was before I noticed anything like third person narration and ‘Carolyn’ and ‘Keene’ were just words on the cover. At one point my greatest ambition was to become a blonde detective who wrote novels.  

Then I grew up and at some dinner party or wherever such things are revealed I was horrified to learn that ‘Carolyn’ and ‘Keene’ was the author.

Then I grew up some more (this time only very recently, in the last month or so) and learned that even Carolyn Keene was a sham, that the Nancy Drew books were written by a posse of writers employed by a syndicate—all under the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene—each of them receiving $125 per book.

Not a small shock to the system, this.

I’ve kept a handful of the series, I’m not sure why, and flipping through them I wonder—because I don’t read much YA—how much and in what way books for kids have changed. For instance, Nancy Drew is eighteen in the first book, ancient really, considering we were reading this in grade four or five. And her friend, Helen Corning, is three years older… twenty-one. Does this still happen? Are books with eighteen year old protagonists who have friends that are the legal drinking age written for nine and ten year olds? I’m not saying they shouldn’t be… although it does seem a little odd, but just wondering how and what and why things have changed.

What do ten year old girls read today?

Who are their literary heros?

◊

Nancy Drew began peeling off her garden gloves as she ran up the porch steps and into the hall to answer the ringing telephone. She picked it up and said, “Hello!”

“Hi, Nancy! This is Helen.” Although Helen Corning was nearly three years older than Nancy, the two girls were close friends.

“Are you tied up on a case?” Helen asked.

“No. What’s up? A mystery?”

“Yes—a haunted house.”

Nancy sat down on the chair by the telephone. “Tell me more!” the eighteen-year-old detective begged excitedly.

“You’ve heard me speak of my Aunt Rosemary,” Helen began. “Since becoming a widow, she has lived wither her mother at Twin Elms, the old family mansion out in Cliffwood. Well, I went to see them yesterday. They said that many strange, mysterious things have been happening there recently. I told them how good you are at solving mysteries, and they’d like you to come out to Twin Elms and help them.” Helen paused, out of breath.

“It certainly sounds intriguing,” Nancy replied, her eyes dancing.

“If you’re not busy, Aunt Rosemary and I would like to come over in about an hour and talk to you about the ghost.”

“I can’t wait.”

After Nancy had put down the phone, she sat lost in thought for several minutes. Since solving The Secret of the Old Clock, she had longed for another case. Here was her chance!

~from The Hidden Staircase, Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, by Carolyn Keene

the long and worthwhile road…

~ carin ~ 5 Comments

—That leads to my bookseller’s door.

Please understand.

I don’t have to drive. I can call the store, phone in my order [and have, often], or place it online through the shop’s website. I can have it delivered to my doorstep—but I prefer the thirty minute drive to pick up the books in person, see how the shelves are stacked, see what’s in the windows, chat with staff about new favourites, gift ideas, book club picks, the best food in town, the latest author reading or event being held in Blue Heron’s studio space [where among this summer’s inaugural events was a Neil Flambe camp for kids with Kevin Sylvester], or just wander about neighbouring shops. It’s the kind of town where you feel encouraged to wander, discover things, where you end up getting back in your car with not only books but goat cheese, olives, pastries, fresh bread—the fixings for a perfect rest of the day.

The bookshop is merely the town’s heart. Stuart McLean named it among his ten favourites in the country.

Recently ordered, collected, or waiting for me, are Joe Brainard’s I Remember, Alice Zorn’s Ruins & Relics, Brenda Schmidt’s Grid, Jon Klassen’s This is Not My Hat, Alice Peterson’s All the Voices Cry,  Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s essays on poetry, Threading Light, the re-release of Sheree Fitch’s classic, Toes in My Nose, and the short story anthologies Riptides  and Bridges. 

All of which has arrived, or will, without a glitch. The phone will ring and I’ll pick a day when I need goat cheese and good bread and head out.

Lucky us for having all that.

And congratulations to Shelley Macbeth, the creative genius and owner of Blue Heron Books, who, this year, [so well deservedly] received the CBA Libris Award for Canadian Bookseller of the Year.

Congratulations.
And thanks.