Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 22

A Day of Painting

The last couple of days I've had the best fun I've had in ages. Years ago, my kids and I painted a mural in the long narrow hallway between living room and kitchen. They've been wanting to re-paint and I promised that we would do so this holiday.

First we had to cover over the old mural with 2 coats of paint. That wasn't so much fun, but I had the satisfaction of seeing my kids discover that it's a lot of work, given that A and I have done all previous wall painting, and I've done it more than once. However the next day the real fun began.

Each of us got a third of the wall. H painted a scene with colourful penguins on hers. I painted a goofy western dragon and a serious Chinese dragon on mine. M is still working on hers, a meticulous skyscape of Toronto based on a photograph. She has been painting for hours and is still at it.

A was back teaching this week, so his participation has consisted of being called repeatedly to admire our progress, which he has done with aplomb.

Decluttering is good, but sometimes making a mess with paints is even better!

(Photos to follow as soon as M is finished.)

Filed under: Fun Tagged: creativity with paint

The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak

Let me start by saying that The Winter Palace is so rich with historical detail about Russia in the time of the young Catherine the Great that the atmosphere surrounded me even when I put the book down.

The Winter Palace tells the story of the young and naive (or is that a masquerade?) Princess Sophie. An insignificant princess from a backwater German principality, Sophie is married off to the mentally disabled and unstable heir to the Russian throne, the nephew of the Russian Empress Elizabeth.  How Princess Sophie becomes Catherine the Great is the driving force behind the narrative, which is told from the point of view of a "tongue," one of the  court spies.  Like Sophie, Barbara (in Russian Varvara) is a foreigner, a Polish girl of lowly status who rises in the court through her own ability to negotiate its intrigues. Managing to worm her way into the service of the Empress, Barbara goes on to become Sophie's spy because of her genuine affection for the girl who will become a powerful empress in her own turn.

I've known the author of this fine novel for about 18 years. We met at the Humber workshop for writers in 1994 and have been friends ever since. We are cultural cousins–my parents are Polish Jews, and Eva is Polish. It's remarkable that she writes so skillfully in English given that Eva left Poland as a young woman. Yet she does and Eva has made steady and well-deserved progress  in her writing career since we met. Her first novel, Necessary Lies, was published by Dundurn, a small and well respected Canadian press, and won Amazon's first novel prize. Her second novel, The Garden of Venus, was published in Canada and the UK by HarperCollins. The Winter Palace is her third novel in English, and is coming out this month simultaneously in Canada, the UK, and the US under Random House imprints.

Eva's research is impeccable and I'm always impressed by the way she connects with academic researchers who share with her the least known and most vivid details of everything from medical equipment to toileting. The 18th century comes fully alive in The Winter Palace, and the rise of two generations of powerful women is unforgettable:

There had been many lessons since that first one. Soon I knew how to pick locks with a hairpin, how to tell by the grain of wood where concealed drawers were hidden. I knew how secret pockets could be sewn into belts and traveling sacks, letters hidden in secret compartments of clocks or in the lining of shoes, tucked away in chimneys, the vents of stoves, beneath windowsills, inside cushions, or in the bindings of books.

I learned how to trail someone without being seen, to tell the true smiles from those that masked treason, to sneer at the flimsy hiding places underneath loose floorboards or under the pillows, places even the least apt of thieves could find.

Grand Duchess Catherine at the time of her marriage, by Louis Caravque 1745

Filed under: Literary Tagged: Catherine the Great, Eva Stachniak

Decluttering 365–Day 1

Actually I lie, I started a couple of days ago. And I can't promise a post a day about decluttering. I can't even promise to declutter every day because Web of Angels will be out in 2 months and there are guest blogs and interviews in the works with, I hope, more to come. I also have new novels on the go, books to read, and, of course, my own family–and there has to be time for skating, not to mention that I want to start swimming, sewing, and knitting again.

Oh, and my children want to re-paint the mural in our hallway, so we are prepping the wall today, giving it a base coat of white. I'm thinking of painting a dragon in my section.

You see my problem folks. I need more than 24 hours in a day.

However, I recently spent time with someone I love who is a hoarder. It gave me the willies. And even though no one in my house is hoarding, we have the North American problem of too much stuff. Our small old house is crying out to be relieved of it. The dear thing is doing its best for a family of 4 with 2 home offices, one of which belongs to an academic who teaches everything from soup to nuts.

So this is my project for 2012. I hear that getting rid of clutter gives people more energy and a sense of mental spaciousness, too. I'll let you know how it goes.

I don't promise a post a day, but here are a couple of pictures to start.

contents of 1 drawer: how do I organize this?

removing sticky labels with mineral oil and elbow grease

Filed under: Fun, Personal Tagged: decluttering

Looking to 2012

"I made a gift for you" (click to enlarge)

One of my children wrote this on my window yesterday. I will take it as my motto for 2012. Each day can I say, "I made a gift for you," a gift of the day, a gift of my heart, of love, of my laughter, of my being? That would be a year worth living. All of you have done that for me this year.

Thank you for reading my blog, for being a part of this online community, for sharing comments and links, for writing your own blogs. It's made my life a richer one and has shown me the best of what the internet can be.

Wishing everyone a new year of peace, contentment, and good reading!

Filed under: Personal, Uplifting Tagged: blogging 2012

Last Night Of Hanukah

This is what we saw as the candles burnt low, reflected in the window, Christmas lights visible from across the street. We were all sitting in the living room, lights off, watching the candle flames. At least A and I were doing so. My kids played tug of war with a blanket accompanied by great hilarity until the last few minutes when I asked them to be quiet as the lights went out one by one, remaining in heart and memory for another year.

Hanukah 2011

Filed under: Personal, Uplifting Tagged: Hanukah, light

TV Christmas

I grew up in the golden ghetto, a neighbourhood surrounded on 3 sides by railroad tracks, an irony that I was aware of even as a kid, given that this neighbourhood was almost entirely Jewish with a significant sprinkling of holocaust survivors. Even so I missed Christmas.

None of my friends celebrated Christmas. There weren't any Hanukah bushes, nobody got piles of presents. But that wasn't what I missed. There was something in the air that I could feel even down in my suburban Jewish neighbourhood, an excited preparation that I wasn't a part of, all headed toward a single night of jubilation.

I was glued to the tube. We only got 2 English channels, CBC and CTV, and most of the year programming consisted of fishing, hockey, the Pig and Whistle, and soaps. But at Christmas, I saw A Christmas Carol (the Alistair Sims one), It's a Wonderful Life (my favourite), Miracle on 34th Street, and White Christmas.

Generosity fought with greed and won. Hope won over cynicism. Love won over money. An angel got his wings. That was what I yearned for, that was what I missed and what I thought people who celebrated Christmas enjoyed.

Yesterday I was at a neighbourhood party. It was a lovely time and I had such pleasure playing with my neighbour's one year old that I dreamed about him last night. But this is what struck me: how many people were not looking forward to today. How many had obligations to family members who had no understanding for the difficulties that they were imposing. Demands are at their peak, sympathy at a low. If only everyone could just stop, and look at each other, and hold hands like the people of Whoville.

So I want to take this moment to remember my childhood vision, to touch the light, and carry that with me later today as we head off to my in-laws for Christmas.

Wishing you all the joy of lengthening days.

Filed under: Uplifting Tagged: white Christmas

Menstruating in India–Radical Change

When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn't dream of. He wore one himself–for a whole week. Fashioning his own menstruating uterus by filling a bladder with goat's blood, Muruganantham went about his life while wearing women's underwear, occasionally squeezing the contraption to test out his latest iteration. It resulted in endless derision and almost destroyed his family. But no one is laughing at him anymore, as the sanitary napkin-making machine he went on to create is transforming the lives of rural women across India.

via An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation.

Muruganantham is himself an uneducated poor man who came to the invention of sanitary napkins because his wife wore rags, telling him that she couldn't afford milk for the family otherwise. She is in the same situation as 80% of Indian women. Can you imagine that?

In his investigation of the situation, he found that a machine to produce sanitary napkins costs half a million dollars and so was left to large multinational corporations, pricing the napkins out of reach.

Eventually Muruganantham invented a low cost machine ($2500) and has founded a company whose purpose is to obtain the machines and train rural women to use them as a microbusiness. In this way, it provides rural independence and employment as well as affordable sanitary napkins for rural women.

Read the whole story at the link above–his journey and his various research methods are fascinating. He endured mockery and abandonment (his wife and mother left him but came back in the end). Patriarchy zero, invention and compassion 10.

h/t Bouphonia

Filed under: Interesting Tagged: invention, women in India

In Praise of Reality

This week I've been very tired after a flurry of busy preparations for the release of Web of Angels as well as months of homework, swim lessons, hockey games and nagging about the multiplying swarms of mess. When the days get short, my need for rest makes itself known in despondency or in bad temper. Trees are resting; squirrels are resting. It's only we humans, with our stubbornly perverse ideas, who insist on partying, buying, and exchanging false smiles for gifts nobody wants.

These are the things that are restoring me to myself and my family. I went for a walk. In a cement supply outlet I saw a pale green structure that looked like a cement mixer topped by a small peaked hut with a door. On the ground next to it was a red truck. I walked past a short old man wearing a hat with ear flaps. We smiled at each other. Later I went skating. I made a Hanukah card for one child and sewed a book bag for the other.

The bag started out as a sweatshirt–and it was in process for a long time to be made over into a quilted jacket. Instead it's ended up as a book bag and I felt so happy making it:

At this time of year commercialism seeks to displace what is real, the simple things around us and the underlying reality of love and light that connects us. And in reaction to that, I see a lot of anger–about "happy holidays" replacing "merry Christmas" or about the inescapable Christmas songs and decorations. But I think the anger is about something deeper. It's about missing the reality, the need for rest, the yearning for light, the desire to connect, and the loneliness and ache of all the seasons that love and light weren't perceptible.

I'm going for a walk now to touch base with that reality, inner and outer. And this evening, when we watch our simple candles burn, I will see the light and know it in my heart.

May winter be good to you; may it birth hope and new life.

Filed under: Personal, Uplifting Tagged: seasonal thoughts

Grand Prize Photo Alan Taylor – In Focus – The Atlantic

 

Winners of the National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 – Alan Taylor – In Focus – The Atlantic.

Filed under: Beautiful Tagged: nature photography

Happy Hanukah!

I've been writing posts in my head–somehow there is a gap between head and fingers though, so none of them have been posted. It is winter solstice (though technically the solstice occurs this year at 5:30 am tomorrow) and the first full day of Chanukah, which began yesterday evening after sunset. One of my children lit the leader candle (the Shamus) and the other used it to light the candle for the first day. God help us on the days of uneven candle numbers. I'll have to light the odd one. Advice to gift givers: never give siblings a shared present.

For your Chanukah delight, rock with this:

Filed under: Fun Tagged: chanukah fun