June 20th, 2008 writerspice
Last week at this time I was somewhere in southeastern Michigan.
I say somewhere because usually on the last day of a press trip (which it was last Friday) my brain is so addled that I’ve no idea where I am. And to try to remember a whole week later? Forget it.
So, thank goodness, I say, for the 109-page-itinerary which tells me exactly where I need to be and when and is now sitting beside my computer, a handy tool for completing my report and pitches. It says I was in Mount Clemens. And in fact, I should remember that because the Anton Art Center and the cute downtown itself were among my faves.
But it’s a whole other week now. And with lots of check-marks successfully colouring in my to-do list, I’m realizing that it’s nearly time to climb out of the office chair I’ve been stuck in all week, roust out the cucumbers that have started sprouting in my compost bin, plant them properly in the garden and go get a movie for an evening – (dare I say it, a w-h-o-l-e weekend) – of blissful relaxation.
With another trip coming up in a few days and a list of assignments lined up and waiting to take me far into July, I’d say I deserve it. But regardless of all that, I just better take some time for myself, because lately I am feeling quite a lot like Ollie as he is in this picture I took moments ago, up too early, burying himself away from the world (yes, his skill at using pillows is legendary in our family), more than ready for his own weekend of naps.
Psst. Check out my updated clippings page, with some links to newly published stories.
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June 11th, 2008 writerspice
Never mind all the questions – where’s it grown, how’s it grown, is it grass-fed or corn? You can leave those at home for this trip to market. Entirely made up of local ecological farmers (many members of the Simcoe County Chapter of Ecological Farmers’ Association of Ontario) the annual Eco-Farmers’ Market is all organic and ecological, all the time.
Now in its fifth season, the market operates on the grounds of Hempola Farms, just north of Barrie (from Highway 400, take the Forbes Road exit or take Highway 93 north from the intersection with Highway 11, just past Barrie. Hempola is at the corner of Highway 93 and Forbes Road).
A bustling collection of health-conscious farmers and shoppers milling around food-laden tables, the market features fresh non-chemically treated vegetables pulled from the ground or plucked from their bushes as soon as they’re ready.
Start with radishes, greens, peas and strawberries or potted perennials ready to be planted and move into tomatoes, carrots, green onions and corn as the summer season moves along. Simcoe County meat farmers also sell healthy and hormone free animal products like grass-fed beef and free-range pork. Dandelion and lavender jellies, herbs, baked goods and cheeses round out this selection of fresh, local, healthy food.
Opening this Friday, June 13th at 3:30 p.m., the market runs until about dusk and continues all summer, until Thanksgiving weekend.
Photo by Julia Manzerova
Posted in Food, Going Green, Simcoe County | No Comments »
June 8th, 2008 writerspice
Rising gas prices have finally raised the question. Should we stay or should we go?
It’s not an easy one to answer, but since airplanes deliver one of the worst doses of carbon, it’s long overdo that we stop treating travel like it is sacrosanct in the discussion about climate change and start thinking about what staying home can give us.
Read more about this – “the first real end of the exciting and engaging world that those of us in the more prosperous part of the planet (who are prosperous enough to afford it) have learned to enjoy over the past hundred years” – in my most recent post on Celsias.com
Photo by Malias
Posted in Contemplations, Going Green, Issues | No Comments »
June 6th, 2008 writerspice
On my way home from the library last night, yet another bit about the collapsing airline industry was on the radio.
Dubbed the “airline armageddon” by blogger Lou at The Cost of Energy, it seems like passenger costs for plane trips are rising faster than anyone can book their tickets. Despite the disappointment for travelers (or would be travelers – I think of my 7 and 11-year-old nephews who might miss out on seeing very much of the world as they grow up), anyone with half a brain knows this is inevitable.
Back in May, David Suzuki said it himself:
Air travel leaves the heaviest carbon footprint among all modes of transportation and skyrocketing fuel prices are already having explosive effects…. Economists think tourism can continue to grow into infinity. But we have to realize that nothing can grow forever. This unchecked growth only accelerates us on a suicidal path.
But yesterday, when I was cruising through back blog posts at Celsias.com, a wee bit of hope for future adventures sprang up in my soul. I caught sight of a piece by George Monbiot (the writer of Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning
and, the newest, Bring on the Apocalypse: Collected Writing
) discussing the feasibility of relaunching airships.
I know what you’re all thinking. I know because I thought it, too. Starts with H and ends with G, right? Here’s what George says:
The word airship elicits a fixed reaction in almost everyone who hears it: “what about the Hindenburg?”. It’s as if, every time someone proposed travelling on a cruise ship, you were to ask, “but what about the Titanic?”. Yes, there was a spectacular disaster – 71 years ago. It has lodged in our minds because, like the Titanic, the Hindenburg was bigger and plusher than any craft built before it, and it was carrying rich and prominent people. The conflagration was witnessed by journalists and broadcast all over the world. It also become the technology’s funeral pyre: the Hindenburg was doomed long before it burnt, as airships were already being displaced by aeroplanes.
Granted, the solution isn’t perfect. In one of these contraptions – and four companies are working towards getting them off the ground (who knew?) – it would take about two days to get from New York to London. And the resources they would need, writes Monbiot, are somewhat scarce. But nothing in this global quandary – apart from using less and staying home (more on that in days to come) – is infallible.
Despite all our questions and confusion as we face these challenges, the article makes for an interesting read and a bit of black-and-white mental imagining of a future that might have been dreamed up by our great-grandparents, in the days before the airplane industry became the only way to go.
Photo by TeecNosPos
Posted in Going Green, Issues, Recommended | No Comments »
June 4th, 2008 writerspice
I love the United States. The country is full of grand vistas and great people.
And even though lots of Canadians complain about the tough process of getting across the border these days, I’ve never had a problem.
More often than not, I find the folks working the conveyor belts and waving me through the metal detector professional and often personable. Yes, getting through customs is a longer process and the lines are often peppered with panicked people anxious that they’re going to miss their flights, but what can you do? Get there early. Take a deep breath. Leave your liquids behind.
But with today’s news from ABC that “citizens from countries in the VWP [Visa Waiver Program], which allows travelers from certain countries to enter the United States without a visa, will be required to submit their travel plans and personal information before their day of travel,” I’m not so sure I’ll be visiting nearly as much after the requirement comes into effect next January.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing to hide. But the thought of logging my passport number into a computerized system 72 hours before I’m set to go, to wait as my name is checked against a terror watch list, raises visions of all those zombie-like automatons wandering around that fictitious world of George Orwell’s. According to the article, the Europeans are balking, too, with concerns about what will happen to the collected information and how long it will be held.
And there are other questions, as well. Who is on that list? What is the definition of a ‘terrorist’? Does someone attending a hunger strike outside the U.S. consulate to protest American military policies end up on that list? Stranger things have happened.
Posted in Issues, News, United States | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2008 writerspice
Last year I spent some time chatting with a few local farmers to produce an article about the importance and ease of eating from the fields in the county I call home. Called Think Fresh, Eat Locally, the article is in the May/June issue of Simcoe Life magazine.
With my ever-burgeoning interest in growing food and using wild edibles and herbs (my newly-planted veggie garden is sprouting and a batch of mullien from a neighbour’s driveway is drying in the dehydrator as I type), I poured my heart and soul into this piece.
Unfortunately, in the print issue, it ran with the wrong byline.
Although this has never happened to me before, it is a fairly common occurrence for lots of writers (a few colleagues were quick to share their own tales of woe when I released my sorrows in a forum).
But do me a favour. Should you live somewhere within Simcoe County and come across the magazine, take out your pen, cross out the wrong name and write mine in. That would make me feel a whole lot better.
Chef Doug Porter puts together some locally-grown greens at Collingwood’s Simcoe County Restaurant (photo by Lauren Carter)
Posted in Food, Going Green, Issues, Ontario, Recommended, Seasons, Simcoe County, World, Writing Life | No Comments »
May 27th, 2008 writerspice
This past weekend, J. and I embarked on a bit of a staycation.
We still drove three hours to get there, but by creeping along in our fuel-efficient car, we only used about a half tank of gas (the starter went and J. had to replace it in our B&B’s driveway and then the emergency brake kinda caught fire as we were picking Ollie up at the kennel, but, hey, you can’t have everything!)
I’m still working on pitches and stories from the excursion, so can’t say much lest I give my ideas away, but suffice it to say we were in the St. Jacobs area. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the market (sources tell me that the 130-year-old Kitchener Farmers’ Market is even better, with more reliably local food and less crap), but Saturday afternoon found us in the village, a first time for both of us.
We wandered around a pottery shop in a renovated silo, sat quietly in a replicated meeting house in a museum dedicated to Mennonite culture and explored a hundred year old broom-making shop and antique store (where I coveted an ornate Victorian twine dispenser made of iron – must be all the Jane Austen I’m reading lately).
St. Jacobs reminded us a bit of Elora, that other once-sleepy Ontario village that came to fame and is now lined with expensive boutiques and crowds of bussed-in tourists eager for the authentic.
Both towns seem a bit like how I would imagine the Southwestern Ontario pavilion at Epcot Centre and over rhubarb-strawberry squares at the bakery, we wondered what the Mennonites think. In the museum, we learned that they were first nick-named “the quiet in the land” when they arrived in the late 1700s. It must be strange for such private people to have to run their errands in a town crowded with people wishing for a glimpse of their black wagons rolling down the road.
We didn’t see many horse-drawn wagons. Mostly we saw buses lined up in the wide parking lot a block from main street and lots of cars, one from Florida. But on the way home we stopped at the Kissing Bridge, the province’s last remaining covered bridge, and as I was snapping photos, one came by. I surreptitiously took a picture – not the greatest one, but you get the idea – before we continued on our way, driving down back country roads with dust around their edges, to wander our way home.
Posted in Ontario, Recommended, Writing Life | 1 Comment »
May 23rd, 2008 writerspice
Last week, I went to the countryside town of Uxbridge, Ontario on assignment. While there, I wandered into Bredin’s Bakery, bell jingling and old-fashioned porch door slamming behind me.
Inside, as a fourth-generation baker toiled away in the background, I tasted some cookies I’m pretty sure they are serving on simple china plates on a fluffy white cloud in, um, heaven.
Here’s a photo of a baked-goods buyer, perplexed over what delicious bit of paradise pastries she should purchase.
Either that, or she’s wondering what I’m doing, bent over, aiming a camera at her face. Ah, well. It made for a good shot of this simple bakery with delicious fare.
I’m glad I went. Who can argue with contented crumb-fingered sighs?
(And, yeah, okay, I guess this is me officially coming-out as no longer gluten-free – a long, controversial story that can be summed up by saying, nobody knows one’s body like the person who has to live in it).
Posted in Food, Ontario, Pretty Pictures, Recommended | 1 Comment »
May 20th, 2008 writerspice
Here in Canada, despite our long-standing sovereignty, we continue to celebrate the birthday of royal monarch Queen Victoria. Known affectionately as May 2-4 (get it?), the long May weekend, which just passed, always reminds me of those oh-so-brief relationships that peppered the tedium of high-school.
You know the type. For weeks before actually getting together, the spirits were drenched in infatuated anticipation. A butterfly broke lose from its chrysalis every time he cast a glance your way in chemistry class. And then, the moment came. You got together with some sloppy dance-floor kisses, only to quickly discover in the coming days that he was either a) drunk, b) actually seeing someone else, or c) really, really into hockey.
We spend so much time waiting – a whole white, frigid winter – for the first weekend of summer and nine times out to ten, those three precious days are still bogged down by bad weather. This year, the annual May 2-4, proved again disappointing.
J. and I had great plans. We were going to head out into the wind for an overnight with my mom and step-dad on our co-owned sailboat. Only problem, the wind would have knocked us flat, to then be pounded by rain, to then be frozen solid by the plummeting temperatures.
Sailing plans cancelled, we were still obligated to bring the canine baby to the kennel. So, we dropped him off and ended up at what we call commerce-land to catch a matinee.
Unfortunately, everybody else in town had the same thought.
We got advance tickets for the early evening show, grabbed a disappointing bite to eat at a nearby cafe and ended up taking advantage of our dog-free time by, um, wandering the aisles of Future Shop, Home Depot, and, yes, I admit it, Walmart, where we purchased a Pyrex measuring cup, some smaller measuring cups and fish hooks. J. also romantically squired me into a Dollar Store where we cruised the craft aisle and he bought a single square of yellow foam and some beads.
After killing those couple hours, we ended up watching that new Patrick Dempsey rom-com, Made to Honor or Made of Honor, or whatever it’s called. Despite the clutch of teenage girls actively pretending they owned the place in the back row, it wasn’t all that bad. The best part? Both the stunning Scottish scenery and beer, afterwards, at a downtown pub where we talked about the movie, writing and extreme wrestling. Mostly.
Once I was stuck in a small village in Argentina with nothing at all to do. So I went to a movie. A scrawled sign on the outside gave the ticket price for something like “a man and his family.” I’m not sure what I paid for the film – that Nicolas Cage one, where he wishes he was single and wakes up into an alternate life without his family – but it was fun and gave me a break from both my solitude and my book.
Yesterday morning, lying in bed finishing up a Jane Austin novel, I realized that sometimes, no matter where you are, no matter what high hopes you have for a holiday, what exotic food is appearing on your plate or what language floats through the air around you, plans just don’t work out and life becomes, well, boring. Back before we had the privilege of easy travel, it was that way more often (especially for women who couldn’t randomly announce they were leaving the children and the spouse to go shoot something in the pastoral countryside and had to rely on needlework to vigorously stab away the time).
That’s just the way things are.
Book finished, I got up and weeded the garden and felt a bit better. And, hey, no matter how many disappointing, sloppy kisses the weekend gave us, it’s still a four-day work-week and nobody can be annoyed by that (well, except maybe Queen Victoria, who, in all her portraits, never really seems happy about anything at all. Maybe she was sick of all that needlework).
Posted in Contemplations, Orillia, Seasons | No Comments »
May 14th, 2008 writerspice
This morning I jumped out of bed at 7 a.m., realizing we forgot to put the garbage out.
My husband took the dog for a walk as I scurried around the house, sweeping every paper receipt, toilet paper roll and stray ice cream container (hey, it’s been a hard week) into the recycling bin. The garbage was easier – tied the bag up, plastered my neon orange city-certification sticker on it and rushed it out to the curb just as the truck was pulling up.
It’s funny the things you never think about when you’re a long way from home, living out of your backpack and steadily disposing of any accumulated waste as you go (or shoving it in your journal to be either scrap-booked back home or thrown out a decade later). I probably desperately need a vacation, but that’s what I was thinking as I breathed a sigh of relief, poured a cup of tea, fired up the computer and entered my Gmail account.
Needless to say, it was nice to move from a meditation on garbage (and, believe me, I could talk a bit more about that if I had the inclination…) to the news that my blog made Travelhacker‘s list of the top hundred travel blogs.
I’m up there with such esteemed bloggers as The Lost Girls, three twenty-something New Yorkers who just, well, took off, Slow Travel, a blog by writer Ed Gillespie who took a flight-free trip around the world, writing columns for the Guardian along the way, and Nerd’s Eye View, where she’s written a great post about how to keep your travelblog alive when you’re not traveling… NOT on the list: talk about the monotonous chores that bind us to home.
Oh, well.
Posted in News, Recommended, Writing Life | 1 Comment »
