Bill Engleson's Blog, page 9
February 25, 2014
A comment on the Vancouver Sun series, Too old to stay, too young to thrive…
The first installment of Tracy Sherlock’s and Lori Culbert’s six-part series, Too old to stay, too young to thrive, is a powerful expose of life as it is (but shouldn’t be)
for hundreds of youth in one form of care or another of the State who have aged out.
As I post this observation, just after the publication of the 4th installment, Tracy Sherlock and Lori Culbert have presented an intense overview of the Child Welfare system peppered with a few powerful personal story vignettes.
What I found mostly heartening was that the first article not only laid out the dilemma of youth not being fully ready to have their bureaucratic umbilical cord severed
but that it also offered a sampling of solutions which other jurisdictions have had the moral courage and the fiscal smarts to explore.
What is not quite hopeful (actually, it is downright depressing -though not unexpected) is that the Minister for Children and Family Development, Stephanie Cadieux, “believes the B.C. Government provides sufficient services for youth who have aged out of care.”
While she likely believes that it may take a village to raise a child, she seems to promote the careless notion that a youth who has turned 19 can manage well enough on his or her own, thank you very much!
It is so much easier to think that, I suppose.
February 13, 2014
Does BC have a child welfare system that is incapable of improvement?
The B.C. Children’s Representative’s most recent report, Lost in the Shadows, is another heartbreaking examination of yet another massive failure of a system that barely seems able to tie its own shoelaces, let alone begin to protect a child.
Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham took a penetrating look at the Representative’s report on February 7. Today, the Vancouver Sun kindly printed my comments on both Ms Bramham’s column and the report.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond has pulled no punches. She rarely does. The question remains: is there any real will to change BC’s Child Welfare system? The equally devastating aspect of her report is that a whole variety of caregivers and professionals could not find a way to protect one 14 year old. God knows, there were plenty of opportunities.
I hope as many as possible read the report.
January 31, 2014
Ted Hughes does it again…
Courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press has come a report about the Ted Hughes led Sinclair Inquiry that hopefully will have significant impact in many Canadian child welfare jurisdictions. Even as Alberta completes a 2 day symposium on the deaths of children who have received service by, or come to the attention of, the State. Manitoba has been presented with some significant recommendations to better serve the children of the province. All of this has come about after the 2006 murder of 5-year-old Phoenix Sinclair
One of the key recommendations from my perspective is that family service caseloads be capped at 20. Another very practical one is a recommendation to reduce the administrative burdens on social workers.
Hughes also recommends that Manitoba create the position of Representative for Children and Youth.
The lengthy report is well worth reading though its 900 pages may prove a bit of a challenge.
January 17, 2014
One of the key characteristics…
One of the key characteristics I have tried to personify as a writer, at least in my self-styled serious writing, is the willingness to embrace honesty. How that meshes with the expectations of book promotion is a little ambiguous to me. I believe that most advertising is fated to be less than straightforward. Even as I promote my novel, Like a Child to Home, I try and maintain some ethical balance. Mine is a small novel. It has a few flaws which I hope will not detract from the content. Principally, it tells a series of stories about people who, I believe are as candidly portrayed as I could manage and still tell an engaging and enlightening tale.
Today, 10 days into a most unpleasant flu, I received a call from a little bookstore asking that my token 3 copies be picked up as there had been no sales. The store had been kind enough to accept my meagre consignment a few months ago. My promotional efforts have been weak and had failed to even mention this store on my website. I assume, however, that that oversight had little to do with the lack of sales.
Today is also the day that my one foray into a bookstore in the Lower Mainland comes to a scheduled end. Sales were slightly better there and, as far as I know, one lonely book remains.
On the upside today, I had a heartening author/reader moment a few hours ago. I had awkwardly made my feverish way to the General Store to pick up a few provisions. A friend riding by hailed me and expressed his satisfaction in reading my book. These sorts of impromptu encounters happen often in this small community.
To paraphrase my friend, the sometimes difficult content of Like a Child to Home served as a point-counterpoint to his less conflicted work experience and he offered an appreciation, not only for his professional experience, but for the challenges that were, he assumed, mine, as portrayed in my fictional aperitif.
December 31, 2013
I think I will be in good company….
I think I will be in good company, at least alphabetically, as far as The Vancouver Island Regional Library is concerned. At some point in the near future, a few copies of my novel, Like a Child to Home, will be available to the patrons of VIRL (The Vancouver Island Regional Library.)
Two of my 9 alphabetical companions particularly appeal to me: Like a dog with a bone, which could easily have been how some viewed me after my boxes of novels arrived in the mail AND Phyllis Diller’s autobiography, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: my life in comedy, whose title speaks volumes to me about what I have to do as a self-published author to get noticed (and how incredibly difficult that is.)
On this last day of 2013, I vow to read Ms Diller’s book and learn all I can about being a lampshade.
Have a grand 2014, everyone.
1.
Like /
Smith, Ali, 1962-
c1997.
2.
Like a charm : a novel in voices /
c2004.
3.
Like a Child to Home
Engleson, Bill
2013
4.
Like a dog with a bone /
Kelley, Lee Charles.
c2007.
5.
Like a fire
[cd music] /
Burke, Solomon.
p2008.
6.
Like a flower to the sun
[cd music] /
Grunsky, Jack, 1945-
p2003.
7.
Like a hundred drums /
Griessman, Annette.
c2006.
8.
Like a hurricane
2010.
9.
Like a lampshade in a whorehouse : my life in comedy /
Diller, Phyllis.
c2005
10.
Like a lover
[cd music] /
Barlow, Emilie-Claire.
p2005.
November 27, 2013
More than anyone ever wanted to know about my writing process, I bet…
Buried 3/5ths of the way into my novel, Like a Child to Home, is a reference that flashes by so fast as to have little meaning. In describing one character’s stubbly face, my protagonist says, (and, horror of editorial horrors, there is a typo of omission there which I will correct here and now) “It was a broad mug, with a strong jaw that reminded me of hockey star, Mark Messier.”
During the final push through the novel’s second and final proof, the line read, “It was a broad mug, with a strong jaw like that of the old time B movie actor, Charles McGraw.” Charles McGraw, you say? Who was he? Which was the point made to me by my volunteer proof-reader. The odds were that Mark Messier would ring a few more bells than the long departed actor.
Over the past few weeks, I have been watching a number of films with character actor McGraw in them. He has always been one of my favorites, or rather, he has either starred, or appeared in, many films I admire and return to often. Not only was he a presence in great film noir such as The Narrow Margin in which he starred, The Killers, where his brief times on screen were excitingly pivotal to the narrative, or Border Incident, a powerful and strikingly relevant film, even today, he also had a fleeting but forceful role in one of my top ten films ever, Hitchcock’s The Birds.
When I exchanged McGraw’s name for Messier’s, I carelessly forgot why I had drawn on it in the first place. Peppered throughout my novel are movie references, most pertaining to black and white classics, including a few film noir. Whether conceit or homage, I am of an age that appreciates film and its life-long impact on me and am often compelled to make mention of my favorite examples of cinema in assorted writings. In his book, A Passion for Narrative, Jack Hodgins speaks about “creating echoes,” by which I believe he means acknowledging how characters live their lives, what activities they embrace, where they go to spend their free time, a host of things real people do. McGraw was one of my created echoes which easily found its way into the world I created for my protagonist. Though it matters only to me, I should never have excised him.
November 6, 2013
Book Clubbing on Denman…
Some weeks ago, I was asked if I would attend one of Denman’s numerous book clubs (alas, we don’t exactly know how many book clubs there actually are on Denman) at their November meeting. By then, their members would have read Like a Child to Home. I said I would be singularly honoured.
I arrived a few minutes before the appointed time. This punctuality is a personal characteristic I often employed as a social worker. It has always helped me to scan the environment I am entering and gather my resources.
In this situation, I was totally at ease. Gathered in a casual circle in a comfortable living room, we engagingly chatted about the book, about social work, about working in systems and surviving, or not. Though I had had individual conversations with other people who have read my novel, and also knew most of the members of the book club, this was the first time I had delved into the intricacies of my novel with a group of any kind.
Seeing and hearing about your work from others is illuminating. It had some of the qualities of a very gentle, very safe intervention.
Towards the end of the visit, I was asked to read a selection. I chose the last couple of pages of a favourite chapter of mine. I had not read this segment, essentially a stand-alone story, in public before. I may have read it a little too fast. I have done a fair amount of public speaking and reading and I do tend to rush. Still, reading the fragment in front of these thoughtful and enquiring readers, a number whom I know are also writers, was a wonderful experience. I was seeing and feeling my work in a whole new light. As we discussed the book, what it said, what it didn’t say, what was there and what wasn’t, for I held back certain themes and tales that seemed to me when I was writing it to not be ready to be told in this work, I felt like I knew the work more completely and intimately.
As I prepare to attend the Raindance Book Festival this weekend, I will take the extreme pleasure of the book club visit with me.
November 1, 2013
Raindance Book Festival approaching fast…
For me, my excitement is mounting as the countdown to my first book festival as a published author approaches. The Raindance Book Festival for Self-Published Authors will be the first real opportunity to present my book in a large setting. The Richmond News article today, with snippets of my recent telephone interview as well as the accompanying photograph with Black Bond Book’s Helen Johnson holding three books including a very shiny copy of my novel, Like a Child to Home, hopefully will draw out friends and book lovers to Lansdowne Centre on Saturday, November 9. I am, in a word, stoked.
October 18, 2013
The Art of Home…
If I were in the Lower Mainland, I would definitely attend this imaginative Art Show which is still open today, Friday, October 18 as well as tomorrow, Saturday, October 19 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at MAKE, 257 East 7th Avenue, Vancouver.
If you would like to meet the artists and participate in a community conversation, come on out on Saturday, Oct. 19 from 4 to 7 p.m.
Secure housing is the key essential to stability. It is so painfully often undervalued by those who have it. This Art Show seems like it captures a host of images of housing dreams and housing reality.
October 12, 2013
A marvelous multi-media report by Pieta Woolley and three talented artists in the October 12 Tyee
Pieta Woolley and the three amazing artists capture a range of stories in Fostering Truth, a multimedia presentation on today’s Tyee. Very impressive and instructive.
With engaging visuals and a number of powerful testimonials, the story of “care” is enhanced.
