Lynn L. Clark's Blog: Writing in Retirement, page 8

The Music in My Head

A few months ago my husband asked me if I always had music in my head. A bit taken aback by the question, I answered "no", but then I started to think about it and realized that the answer was in fact "yes".

Sometimes it's not very good music: when I'm placed on hold and have to endure ABBA pop songs or nearing Christmas when I'm inundated with lyrics such as "it's a marshmallow world in the winter". But for the most part, music is an integral part of who I am (even though I can't carry a tune) and the memories I hold dearest.

There's Eric Andersen's "Moonchild River Song" that my husband played for me when we first met. Johnny Rivers' "Summer Rain" still sounds so plaintive as it invites us to "find peace". The quiet elegance of "Memory" evokes T.S. Eliot, one of my favorite poets in his pre-High Anglican conversion work.

There are of course the songs that always make me cry such as the funeral staple "Amazing Grace" (I much prefer the quiet reassurance of "Morning Has Broken"). There are those that make me smile (Joplin's "Mercedes Benz") or feel exuberant (Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark").

So, yes, there's always music in my head. And it would be such a grey world without it.

Independence Day

I'd like to wish my neighbors to the south a happy July 4th holiday. It's been an especially grueling time for them given the Orlando shootings, the terrorist attacks abroad, and the continual fear-mongering by the demagogue who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, blaming Obama and the Democrats for the world's ills and the rise of ISIS. ((I seem to recall that it was a Republican president named George W, Bush who created the quagmire that is now the Middle East through his ill-advised invasion of Iraq.)

It was a breath of fresh air for me as a Canadian to listen to President Obama's speech to our Parliament. Obama has always been viewed as a reasonable and non-polarizing figure in Canada, and he will be greatly missed when his presidency comes to an end.

If you haven't had an opportunity to listen to his speech, this is the link: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p...

Happy Birthday, America. You deserve much more than the politics of hate.

Helping Homeless Students

NPR explores the issue of homeless students in the public school system, discussing what more can be done to reach them.

The number of homeless students has doubled in the last decade to more than one million. The NPR article highlights the huge burden these youths bear: many of them have come from abusive homes and must struggle to find a way to get to school. They have no place to study and no material or family support.

It's a testimony to the strength of these individuals that they still try to get an education. One of those interviewed talks about living at a campsite, hitchhiking to get rides to school, and doing her homework by the light from the portable toilets.

The full text of this article can be found at http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/0....

Mangled Song Lyrics

I thought it was about time to have a bit of fun with my blog so I did some googling to see if I was the only one who misinterprets song lyrics. For example, in The Eagles' song "Lyin' Eyes," I had puzzled for years over one line which I'd interpreted as "she'll dress up on her mace and go in style". I finally checked the lyrics one day and discovered the correct line is "she'll dress up all in lace and go in style." Okay, that makes sense.

I discovered that I was actually in good company in misunderstanding/mishearing song lyrics. In fact there's a site that lists 100 all-time favorites. Here are a few that I really enjoyed (it seems that Elton John has puzzled quite a few listeners with his songs):

Abba: "Dancing Queen"
See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen

Bee Gees: "Stayin' Alive"
Steak and a Knife, Steak and a Knife
or alternately
Sayin' a lie, Sayin' a lie

Fifth Dimension: "Aquarius"
This is the dawning of the Age of Asparagus, Asparagus

Elton John: "Crocodile Rock"
I remember when Iraq was young

Jefferson Starship: "We Built This City"
We built this city on logs and coal

Three Dog Night: "Joy to the World"
Joy to the visions that the people see

Elton John: "Candle In The Wind"
Goodbye, aubergine

Elton John: "Your Song"
I sat on the roof and kicked at the moths

And my personal favorite, being Canadian, is a line from our national anthem ("O Canada, we stand on guard for thee"):

Oh Canada, we stand on cars and freeze...

For the list from which these examples were drawn, please see http://kissthisguy.com/funny.php. (Note that some of the entries are x-rated.)

Please post a comment if you have some special ones you'd like to share.

Where Have All the Cool Dudes Gone?

The coolest male in my high school had curly hair, which seemed to endear him to the female student population from which he drew a steady stream of girl friends. The coolest females were good-looking as well as athletic, and were usually quick with put-downs of the lesser, unpopular females.

When I went to university the coolest guy had long blonde hair and although he was not by any measure attractive, he always boasted the most beautiful of girl friends. One day as he was walking across the university cafeteria he accidentally dropped his pack of matches (he smoked a pipe, of course). Another student bent down, retrieved the matches, and handed them to Cool Guy, who immediately dropped the matches back on the floor, pretending he had thrown them away in the first place. It must have taken considerable effort to be consistently that cool!

When I remember those days and how achingly much I wanted to be popular, I always think of Janis Ian's song At Seventeen. If I could go back in time and have a word with my younger self, I'd say, "Don't worry. This too shall pass."

Which it did. In fact the coolest boy in my high school still lives in the small town where we grew up, sells cars for a living, and is completely bald. The coolest girl has endured two messy divorces, having been left behind in the dust for younger women and greener pastures.

And now that I'm in my sixties, I don't even know if there's a category for coolness. Is it social status, a flashy car, money, or even just wearing designer- instead of mom-jeans? Or is it even cool at all to wear jeans when you're in your sixties?

And, who knows, maybe being uncool is the new cool. That would rock, wouldn't it?

Last word goes to Janis Ian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn9o...

Reliving The Twilight Zone

There's an episode of The Twilight Zone series called "It's A Good Life" in which a boy, played by Billy Mumy of Lost in Space fame, is able to read the thoughts of others and to punish all those who aren't in agreement with him so that in effect he is able to control history. (There was in fact a successful parody of this episode in one of The Simpsons Halloween specials with the boy being, of course, Bart Simpson.)

This episode of The Twilight Zone has recently come to mind because of the constant efforts of news media and members of the Republican Party to reinvent Donald Trump and make him into a palatable presidential nominee. I'm not really sure if it's Trump's threat to sue the media or his ability to bully his opponents into submission that's caused the reverence being shown to him. Whatever the reason, we are supposed to forget the wall with Mexico, the ban on Muslim immigrants, the non-release of tax forms because it's none of our business, the storm-trooper mentality toward opponents, and the blatant sexism, racism, and xenophobia of this "presumptive" nominee because, after all, this is The Donald.

For me the height of this media absurdity was reached this past Friday on a well-respected news show, With All Due Respect. A political commentator (and a long-time friend of Trump) suggested that his brand is a strong and ultimately likeable man despite being flawed, comparable to Walter White of Breaking Bad.

The commentator also suggested that Trump is perceived to be the type of man who could talk tough to the likes of Putin. (I guess he missed the part where Trump--a few months back--said he admired Putin's leadership style, but then again maybe I'm out of date and Trump no longer regards Putin as a role model.)

To quote the Twilight Zone end narration of "It's A Good Life":

...And if by some strange chance you should run across him, you had best think only good thoughts. Anything less than that is handled at your own risk, because if you do meet [him} ... you can be sure of one thing: you have entered The Twilight Zone.

Remembering My Mum

This is the third Mother's Day since the death of my mother. The first year was very hard for me, but this year I am in the process of slowly moving on.

My mother was born in a small village in New Brunswick, an only child who had an adventurous spirit and loved to swim in and skate across the river that ran close to her house. From what I know of her as an adolescent, she had a sense of humour and a fierce loyalty to family and friends that stayed with her throughout her life.

She married my father and they had my oldest sister Janet before World War II began. My father was a lieutenant in the Carleton-York Regiment, and one of my prized possessions is a photograph of my mother, father (in uniform), and sister Janet before my father left for Europe. He returned early from the war after a training accident left him legally blind. It would be many years before he regained partial sight by undergoing the first successful cornea transplant in Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Ontario.

Mum had an incredible sense of empathy. She cried at nearly everything sad. She bought clothes for the poor families she knew and for those who had suffered the loss of their homes through fire.

I don't want you to think that my mother was a saint. She would be the first to say the contrary. But she dealt with a lot of sorrow and always managed to summon the strength to come through it. The adventurous young woman who once conquered a river became my father's lifelong support. She outlived and grieved five of her seven children.

Mum always cheered for the underdog and had a strong sense of how unfair life could be for those who weren't at the top of the food chain. If I have one memory to share with you of my mother, it would be when late at night she was awakened by the sounds of an angry male voice and a young woman crying outside on the street. Mum, then in her late sixties, opened the bedroom window and yelled: “You leave her alone. I'm calling the police right now!”

It's not easy being a good mother. You make some bad decisions that you must learn to live with for the rest of your life.

But still I hope my son has some special memories of me that will live on after I'm gone.

The Pursuit of Things

There is a very interesting piece by Sam Leith in the Times Literary Supplement, as he reviews books with different perspectives on the pursuit of luxury. Frank Trentmann's Empire of Things is an historical account of consumerism from the fifteenth- to the twenty-first century. David Cloutier's The Vice of Luxury presents a theological attack on rampant consumerism. Noel Thompson's Social Opulence and Private Restraint attacks consumerism from the point of view of a socialist political economy.

There is an obvious link between waste consumption, pollution, and misuse of human and material resources. As Trentmann notes in a passage quoted in the article:

In the world’s oceans today, some 18,000 pieces of plastic are swimming on the surface of every square kilometre of water. On International Coastal Clean-Up Day in 2011, 600,000 volunteers scoured 20,000 miles of coastline for rubbish. By the end of the day, they had collected almost 10 million pounds in weight. Their haul included 250,000 items of clothing, a million pieces of food packaging and several hundred TV sets, mobile phones and bicycles. That year the United States alone produced 210 million tons of municipal waste – enough to fill a convoy of garbage trucks and circle the equator nine times.

For the full text of the article, please see http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/a....

Library Journal on Facebook

Library Journal is an excellent reference source for librarians, educators, researchers, and readers so I decided to check out its Facebook page.

There is a wide variety of offerings from previews of spring/summer mysteries with "[p]sychological suspense, unreliable female narrators, and gritty antiheroes" to information on current library projects and innovations. There's also a weekly Thursday "Ask a Librarian" segment.

Here's the link if you'd like to check it out for yourself: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Librar....

History and Our Haunted Past

I had the pleasure a few months ago of addressing a very lively group of seniors known as the Youngsters of Yore in my local library. I had been invited by them to talk about my writing. I thought I'd share a few excerpts from my talk.

My first book, The Home Child, was published in 2014. Many years before, I'd visited a museum in Brockville, Ontario. One of the exhibits was of a child's bed and worn suitcase: they looked so sad and meagre. I proceeded to read the notice regarding the exhibit and discovered that the items had belonged to a British Home Child who had travelled across the Atlantic to Canada from an orphanage in England. This was the first time I had encountered the term and the stark images of the bed and suitcase stayed with me throughout the years. So when I decided to write my first novel, the British Home Children appeared to me to be a natural subject.

I chose an orphan from the Quarrier homes in Scotland as my starting point for my story: partly because not as much had been written about these orphans and partly because my own ancestors were from Scotland. Although my book is fiction, the story has historical roots in the migration of the British Home Children.

What many Canadians may not realize is how important these children were to Canada and to Ontario in particular. It's estimated that ten per cent of Ontario's population is descended from British Home Children, and despite the many hardships they faced, many went on to serve this country in the world wars or in other capacities.

The Home Child is about Jake Hall, who's spent most of his adult life in a high-rise apartment building in Ottawa. He wants to get out of the city, primarily to escape a failed relationship with his former girlfriend. So he does what many city-dwellers do: he buys an old house in the country and decides to make a fresh start.

But what Jake hasn't counted on is finding a former resident of the house still inhabiting it in spirit form. Jake comes across an old picture of a young boy and a trunk in the attic and with the help of the local librarian Jenny is able to piece together the history of the home child who lived there.

I published my second book in 2015, consisting of two novellas: “Fire Whisperer” and “Circle of Souls”. Again, I spent several weeks doing historical research before writing this book. And, once again, the settings are local. In “Fire Whisperer” the protagonist, Keva Tait, is the child of a troubled marriage and feels the burden of being the “adult” in the family even more so because she is an only child. When she's seventeen, she accompanies her parents on a trip to the Thousand Islands, a last-ditch effort for her parents to try to save their marriage and keep the three of them together as a family. The first week of the vacation is wonderful for her, and she can't wait for the second week. But tragedy intervenes and Keva is injured in a hotel fire inadvertently started by her mother with a cigarette. After the fire, she experiences visual and auditory hallucinations and is diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed on drugs.

The tenth anniversary of the fire is approaching and Keva's desperate to learn what really happened to her that night at the hotel. Unknown to her psychiatrist, she is still experiencing the hallucinations: seeing alternately an elderly woman sitting on her bed and a young dark-haired woman. To add to her confusion, one of her neighbours in her apartment building looks like an older version of the young woman she sees at night. In her heart she knows that her condition is not schizophrenia, but she must convince her psychiatrist of this by confronting her past.

I was truly amazed when I began doing the research for this novella not only at the widespread occurrence of schizophrenia (almost 24 million people worldwide suffer from it), but also at the stories of how women were treated in the previous two centuries when mental illness was defined as including, among other things, bearing children out of wedlock and post-partum depression. The old Rockwood asylum near Kingston housed women in the stables before additions were built for them.

The second novella, “Circle of Souls,” is set in Ottawa and Manotick. Erin Murphy, the main character, is conducting research for her PhD thesis in a small museum, which is based on the Bytown Museum in Ottawa. Erin is researching the building of the Rideau Canal. She's a skeptic with regard to the supernatural: she knows that the museum is reputed to be haunted, but doesn't put any stock in such tales until a lot of weird things start happening to her. She hears strange sounds, views a doll weeping, and is almost pushed down a flight of stairs by an unseen assailant. Her sister-in-law, who works at a nature museum, based on the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, another location that's supposed to be haunted, is also experiencing some spooky events. And the circle gradually expands to include a videographer making a tourist promotional video for the museum where Erin is doing her research; a student tour guide at the old Ottawa jail on Nicholas Street (now a hostel); and the leader of a paranormal investigation group conducting an inquiry at the old Watson's Mill in Manotick. They band together in an effort to find out if there is a common link among these various locations.

This was an extremely interesting story for me to research because of the many tales of haunting that are associated with these sites. I discovered when I did my research that the reported incidents of supernatural activity were far scarier than anything I could invent.

I've just finished writing my third book, The Accusers, which tells the story of three women—Cassie, an introvert in her twenties, Becca, a sixty-five-year-old grandmother and Mabel, a frail octogenarian--who must come together to fight an evil that is rooted in a four-century-old event and which threatens to destroy their families and friends. [This book was published in March 2016].

The richness of history ensures that there are many tales left for me to tell and lots of ghosts of our past to discover....