Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 14
September 3, 2012
Baseball
Today I’m writing about baseball. Have fun with this!
John Fogerty – Centerfield – YouTube.
Filed under: Fun Tagged: Centerfield by John Fogerty
August 15, 2012
Toronto Mayor Reads While Driving
Rob Ford, Toronto’s mayor was caught reading a newspaper while driving on the Gardener Expressway:
“On behalf of all the citizens of Toronto that value road safety, Mr. Mayor … please get a driver…no amount of money you are saving by not having one is worth the life of one of your citizens,” Sgt. Tim Burrows wrote on Toronto police’s official Facebook page.
The last sentence of Sgt. Burrows’s post was later removed.
via Police urge Ford to hire driver after mayor caught reading while driving – The Globe and Mail.
According to a video interview, available at the link above, Ford explained his behaviour: he was busy.
He gave the interview 30 seconds. One question: how come he wasn’t charged?
Filed under: Concerning Tagged: Mayor Rob Ford, reckless driving
August 11, 2012
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
This is a beautiful, heart-breaking, and ultimately redemptive novel about an Ojibway (Anishnabeg) man’s journey from childhood in the bush to his undoing in residential school, experiences in the Native hockey league and in an NHL farm team, his subsequent alcoholism and recovery.
It is a narrative as familiar as the Cultural Revolution stories among Chinese writers or holocaust stories among Jewish writers, ie an individual exploration of a collective trauma. They are all important, even if not all equally literary. This one is so skilled and honest. I want to say brilliant because it shines: Wagamese’s narrative is one I couldn’t put down.
I read Wagamese’s blog, and have always been taken with the strength of his writing as well as the truths expressed by it, which is why I picked up Indian Horse
when I was recently at Book City with my children. I wasn’t disappointed. The writing was so strong and beautiful, I hated to put it down, which I had to, say, in order to sleep and have a family dinner in my honour (birthday). Yesterday I spent two hours in the tub (my favourite spot for reading) until I finished it.
I loved the sections about hockey, not only because I skate and one of my kids plays hockey, but because I could identify as a writer with the joy of a passion tainted by outside forces and then recovered in its purity. I also related (unfortunately) to the journey to overcome the legacy of abuse, not only of the body, but the relentless pursuit of the spirit. But as a writer, I also admired and was impressed by the economy and beauty of the writing, which brought me to tears.
The shameful treatment by Europeans of First Nations in Canada is spoken about and examined far, far less than that of African-Americans in the U.S. And yet my own city, the largest in Canada, for example, was acquired through deceit as a “purchase” from the Mississauga people. The deed, which they signed under a misapprehension of the terms, was blank. There are centuries of dislocation to account for, first due to disease, subsequently due to being pushed back and back to smaller, more remote and more barren areas of land. There is the devastation of the residential schools, generations of children being torn from their families by white authorities and forced into residential schools where their language and customs were outlawed, where abuse was rampant, and even basic accommodations like adequate food and health care lacking. Then there was the 1960s scoop, where Native babies were scooped up without informed, if any, consent in large numbers for adoption by families hardly prepared or able to nurture their resilience or pride. Add to that systematic poverty and racism, and the prevalence of alcoholism is hardly surprising. Mortality and disease rates are higher, life expectancy lower. To this day many reservations lack clean water and adequate housing, not to mention access to health care and education.
I don’t know why this isn’t more in the forefront of our national consciousness. Indian Horse is a terrific novel, on any account, but it also addresses an important subject. And to me this is one of the primary purposes of fiction. It is a quick read at only 220 pages. Make it one you pick up before the end of the summer.
A tiny taste from the opening page:
My people are from the Fish Clan of the northern Ojibway, the Anishnabeg, we call ourselves. We made our home in the territories along the Winnipeg River, where the river opens wide before crossing into Manitoba after it leaves Lake of the Woods and the rugged spine of northern Ontario. They say that our cheekbones are cut from those granite ridges that rise above our homeland…Our talk rolls and tumbles like the rivers that served as our roads. Our legends tell of how we emerged from the womb of our Mother the Earth; Aki is the name we have for her. We sprang forth intact, with Aki’s heartbeat thrumming in our ears, prepared to become her stewards and protectors.
Filed under: Beautiful, Concerning, Literary Tagged: Native literature, Richard Wagamese
August 5, 2012
More on Walmart
I dashed off yesterday’s post in haste and want to add a few thoughts. I’m not in favour of an economic model in which cheap prices depress wages (and working conditions), which require cheap prices, reinforcing the cycle. But what I am heartened by is that a subject which only the Canadian publishers, as yet, have been brave enough to fly–dissociative identity disorder and child exploitation, not far-flung, but of the homegrown variety–has been taken up and embraced by ordinary people in ordinary places. And here and now, Walmart is ordinary and ubiquitous. That Walmart featured Web of Angels, that people have been buying it, pushing it back onto the Globe bestseller list, with no ads, no hype, not even a prize (yet!), is heart-warming. It gives me hope in all sorts of ways. People can be startlingly idiotic–and people can be strikingly intelligent. And just think of it. Of all places, Walmart demonstrates that by featuring Web of Angels. Doesn’t that give you hope?
Swallows peeking out of nests, old water processing plant, Toronto beach (click to enlarge)
Filed under: CanLit, Interesting, Literary Tagged: dissociative identity disorder
August 4, 2012
Bestsellers – in praise of Walmart
Web of Angels is back on the bestseller list! And no small thanks go to…Walmart, which chose this literary novel about a mom with dissociative identity disorder as its featured book for July. In an opportunity to do good and right, Walmart hit it: literature meets mainstream right there.
Bestsellers – Canadian Fiction, August 4, 2012 – The Globe and Mail.
Filed under: Fun, Literary, Personal Tagged: Canadian Literature, Walmart books
August 1, 2012
July 25, 2012
July 13, 2012
‘Small Damages,’ by Beth Kephart
“Dreamlike” is one word for Beth Kephart’s latest novel, “Small Damages,” in which an American teenager is exiled to Spain after she gets pregnant. Her percolating story emerges through Kephart’s lilting prose in that same hazy way you’d meander through the narrow white streets of Seville in the noontime sun or confront the hot, dry winds, redolent of foreign smells and flavors, on a ranch in the Spanish countryside. The reader is lost and found and lost and found again.
via ‘Small Damages,’ by Beth Kephart – NYTimes.com.
I couldn’t be more pleased or agree more completely with every note of praise for Beth’s writing. I have been following Beth’s blog and work for the last few years, and it’s been my privilege to do so. Beth doesn’t compromise her work or the beauty of language despite conventional “wisdom” (there’s a misuse of a word and an oxymoron!). I can’t clap loud enough for the true wisdom of the NYTBR in bringing this to the attention of all.
Her work engages adults and teens alike, those who already know that they love well written characters and beautiful language and those who discover it through her work. Again I say hurray!!! If you haven’t already ordered Small Damages, please do!
Filed under: Beautiful, Literary Tagged: NYT Beth Kephart
July 6, 2012
Panda Playground
If you need a smile today, here it is:
Cute pandas playing on the slide – YouTube.
Filed under: Beautiful, Fun Tagged: nature videos
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