Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 17
April 24, 2012
Most Unique Interview Ever
This week I’m guest blogging for the National Post. I decided that my first post should impart some of the wisdom I’ve gained with experience. For example, years ago before my first novel was published, I had a, let us say instructive, lesson in giving interviews to media:
The technician, limp haired and smoking, grunted at us as he did something to equipment while the radio host led me into an adjoining room. I sat in the chair as directed and put on the headphones she gave me. I still didn’t know the nature of the show. The penny dropped when the program began at midnight sharp, and she announced…
Do head over there, read the rest, and leave a comment for me!
Filed under: Fun, Literary Tagged: National Post Afterword
April 23, 2012
Sunday Ramble
I can tell that spring promotion is winding down because a) I’m walking again; b) I’m taking pictures again; and c) I’m in the mood to blog again. It’s true that, like any writer, my experiences, for eg my neighbourhood in Web of Angels, end up in my work. But I wonder if other writers have this happen too: my characters affect and inspire me.
For example, while I was writing about Sharon making milkshakes for her son’s girlfriend to get some nutrition into the grieving girl, I started making milkshakes for my kids. The African violets Sharon kept in her bathroom ended up in mine.
This weekend, while writing about photography for a newspaper (which I’ll post when it’s up), I went out and bought a new camera. Although I’m fond of my DSLR camera, an entry level Nikon that fits well in my small hands, it’s heavy with the zoom lens. Not in the first five minutes or even half hour of walking, but by the end of the first hour, it is heavy. And what’s worse, that makes me hot.
These days I like to avoid anything that makes me hot, because when I got hot it isn’t mere human warmth, it is a volcanic yogi-like snow melting blast. I have a five year old compact camera and it occurred to me that since its purchase, Panasonic may have come out with newer versions. Indeed, since then there have been many. And by luck, serendipity or Providence, the latest one has just hit the stores. Meaning the next latest was on sale.
I managed to pick up the very last such at Downtown Camera on Saturday. It’s even lighter and more compact than my old one and has a 16x optical zoom. Here’s what I saw with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10 (aka tz20). (Click on any photo to enlarge)
I’ve just been looking at that dandelion on my large monitor, clicking on the plus sign to see it even closer. The beauty of a weed! No wonder kids (mine and I am guessing yours) can’t wait to pluck them and hand them to mom in spring.
The flowers of this gooseberry bush were so fragrant!
That house dates to the 1870s–I loved the detail.
No Toronto walk is complete without a mural. Oh, and there are more photos. I’ll wait and post them tomorrow! I haven’t had a weekend like this in ages, and I needed it–even though I had to work yesterday, too. Thank you Downtown Camera for my lovely blue camera!
Filed under: Beautiful, Fun Tagged: Downtown Camera, urban photography
April 18, 2012
No Translation Needed
Fabulous images in different media from Russian artists in LiveJournal. This one is my favourite because it transcends alphabets:
But a close second, vivid thumbnails bursting with life on sheet music, are here.
Filed under: Beautiful, Interesting Tagged: paper art
April 16, 2012
Does Facebook Make You Lonelier?
It might. According to Moira Burke, interviewed by Stephen Marche for The Atlantic, her studies show that people who compose comments on their “friends’” walls are less lonely than people who just “like” a post or who just read their friends’ status. Stephen speculates that’s because everybody is glossing up their lives, re-touching them like a magazine photo, to seem more fulfilled, successful and glamorous. Reading about all these glam friends makes him feel like a slouch.
John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, takes loneliness seriously:
When we drew blood from our older adults and analyzed their white cells,” he writes, “we found that loneliness somehow penetrated the deepest recesses of the cell to alter the way genes were being expressed.” Loneliness affects not only the brain, then, but the basic process of DNA transcription. When you are lonely, your whole body is lonely.
His take on FB is that it neither promotes nor detracts from loneliness–it’s a tool and the result is all in the use of the tool. However, his research shows that only f2f interactions affect loneliness. The result is that time on FB, if it reduces time in 3D, makes people lonelier.
I was thinking about this myself today. I was on FB, scrolling through my 400+ “friends” to find those I felt comfortable inviting to my reading at the local library tomorrow. I was looking for people whom I know personally, someone I’ve stood and chatted with when we’ve run into each other.
Those kinds of interactions spill over into my conversation with A. And according to research, it’s the number of confidantes we have that relieve feelings of loneliness. Marriages where the spouses don’t confide in each other are just as lonely or lonelier than being single.
Facebook originally started as a way for people to find acquaintances or former friends. And it’s still useful that way. After looking through my list of friends, I contacted someone I know by commenting on her wall. She responded immediately and warmly, and that brightened my day. (And she offered to share real maple syrup her friends had tapped! That was even more of a brightener!)
Interestingly, I only found out afterward, reading Marche’s Atlantic article, that Moira Burke found that posting comments on a friend’s wall increased people’s sense of connection more than simply reading friends’ status updates or even direct messaging.
Is FB a nuisance? A time-waster? A saccharin substitute for connection? Does it stop people from seeking what they really need?
I don’t know. But promoting a book brings up questions about genuine connection, about authenticity and posturing, however sincere an author is. So I think I’ll just create a new FB category, “People I actually know.” At bottom, we are still apes, and nothing eases loneliness like removing nits from each other’s fur. Or an offer of maple syrup tapped by a friend’s friend.
Thanks BT!
(For Stephen Marche writing about FB, click here.)
Filed under: Interesting Tagged: facebook research
April 12, 2012
Winnipeg Web of Angels
It’s taken me all week to recover from my week of travels, and I’m off again tomorrow. Winnipeg was a whirl of media, a live TV interview early morning, and four back to back in the afternoon (print, radio, TV, radio). But I managed to get a walk in right after I landed at the venerable Fort Garry Hotel (mentioned in The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott which I thoroughly enjoyed despite exhaustion!)
Winnipeg was an interesting city. I had the first hint when I arrived at the airport, which was spacious and quiet. The streets are broad. Walking in Winnipeg, I had a sense of all the room we’ve got to spread out a city here in the middle of Canada. Winnipeg’s not a big city. With 700,000 people by the standards of, say, China, it would be considered a small town.
But in Canada it’s a city with dignity and is surprisingly multicultural for the size. Flat land, big sky, the meeting place of two rivers instead of perched on a Great Lake like my home, it’s a place where I somehow didn’t feel out of place–though it would have been much better if my family was with me.
Of course, I have to admit, the charm was enhanced by the glorious sunny day between Winnipeg’s major seasons: snow and mosquitos. Now the pics (click to enlarge):
Filed under: Fun, Interesting Tagged: Assiniboine and Red Rivers, Winnipeg Manitoba
April 8, 2012
April 7, 2012
April 6, 2012
On the Eve of Festivities
Today there was sun and A and I walked along the railway tracks. This is what I saw (click any photo to enlarge):
a kestrel
and there was this…
and this…
So thank you to the birds and the graffiti artists for speaking to the festivals of spring and renewal, to eggs painted or dipped in salt, to celebratory hats and to children looking for that which is hidden.
Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Spring in every way which is celebrated for the good.
Filed under: Fun Tagged: Easter, passover
April 3, 2012
From Grimsby to Winnipeg: Web of Angels Travels
If only I had a cell phone with a camera I'd have taken a shot of the view of the lake and the city skyline across from it yesterday evening. I was reading at the Casablanca Winery Inn, Grimsby, aka Ontario's wine country.
The Grimsby Author Series attracts a dedicated and engaged crowd of 200, and sharing the evening with Marina Endicott, author of The Little Shadows, was delightful. Wonderful host! Thank you Ken Boichuk for your graciousness and intelligent introduction.
If I had time today, I would write more, for example what I learned from Marina about Macs and arranging readings in far away places, but nothing about our children whom, as moms, our conversation inevitably turned to.
But I'm off to Winnipeg, which – compared to Calgary – feels practically next door, being just one province over. And I'll be reading at the fabulous McNally Robinson Bookstore this Wednesday evening at 7:00.
Q and A with The Winnipeg Free Press here.
Filed under: Fun, Literary, Personal Tagged: McNally Robinson Books, Winnipeg
Web of Angels in Calgary
I'm in a whirlwind of travel. Thousands of KM west, 3 provinces, then back home. In an hour my taxi arrives to take me west again. So I'll just leave you, my friends, with these pictures of Calgary, Alberta! (Click any pic to enlarge).
Filed under: Miscellany
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