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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-12-12, Page 20THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2013. PAGE 5. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. – Somerset Maugham The business of writing fiction for a living is altogether strange. The fiction writer is not like the farmer with his seeds, the soldier with his rifle, the teacher with her curriculum or the violinist with her Stadivarius. The writer has only what’s between the ears – and whatever can be coaxed to bubble up and be set down on the page. And even if the fiction writer strikes literary gold, there’s still the chancy, grubby business of getting it published. I know of one writer who toiled for years over what he thought was his masterpiece, only to be metaphorically kicked in the teeth over and over again. He couldn’t even find a North American publisher at first, so in desperation he sent his manuscript to an agent in Britain. He got the book published alright. Quite a nice job actually, in three handsome volumes. Unfortunately, the publisher managed to somehow lose the ending of the book – the epilogue – which rather ruined the effect. Not surprisingly, the British critics were less than kind. “An ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact,” wrote one. “The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed.” Harsh words, but delicious to the ears of North American literary reviewers who reprinted the British reviews without bothering to, you know, actually read the book they were trashing. The bad press was disastrous; the author was deeply in debt and praying that the book would earn enough money to placate the bill collectors. But to be absolutely fair, the book he’d written was a bit...odd. It was written in highly stylized, at times baffling language with dollops of symbolism and lashings of metaphor. It dealt with, among many other themes, madness, murder and mass slaughter, of both men and animals. At times, the author printed stage directions as if a play was being performed. His main character was an animal, for heaven’s sake – an albino, in fact, which thought and acted like a sadistic human stalker. Stephen King might be able to pull off a plot like that, but this author wasn’t Stephen King and the times – the mid-19th century – certainly weren’t propitious for such an outlandish and unlikely tale. Nevertheless, the author – unfamiliar with the rules of novel writing – persisted and finally found an American publisher who was willing to take a flyer. In 1851, Harper and Brothers of New York published a North American edition. The book was a dud – mostly because of those critical British reviews. The author, they say, never really recovered from his failure and died an unhappy, debt-ridden failure. Pity he didn’t live a little longer. The author’s name was Herman Melville and his book, Moby Dick, is now considered a classic. Strange business, writing fiction. Arthur Black Other Views So you want to be a writer Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense For a lot of people there is a sight or an activity that signifies the start of the Christmas season, but, for me, it’s been all about the olfactory and gustatory. Maybe that speaks to the fact that I’m incredibly near-sighted and not as involved with decorating as other people, but for me it’s always been about the smells and tastes of the seasons. Discarding the short-sightedness and the fact that decorating has never really been my idea of a Saturday afternoon well-spent, I think the smells and tastes of Christmas are far more influential and create far richer memories than a snowy landscape or the thrill of tobogganing down a hill. (And not to ignore my other senses, I’m not really big on Christmas music. I don’t hate it, but there are no sounds that I can point at and say, “Yep, that’s Christmas,” in a positive manner). Don’t get me wrong, some of my favourite memories involve my old Harley Davidson GT-style snow racer and a hill near a certain Goderich golf course. That said, when I think of Christmas, my mind always gravitates towards a few key things. Apple Pie: Sure, apple pie is certainly not something that is relegated to a Christmas treat. You can usually find it at pretty much every bake sale and special occasion throughout the year. That said, those pies, with all due respect, have nothing on my Grandma Golding’s apple pie. Every year Christmas would be when the time it took to load the car up with presents and get our snow gear on would only be matched by the 20- to 30-minute trip from Goderich to Seaforth and it was all made worthwhile not by the presents and not by the time spent with family (I was a kid, forgive my lack of sentimentality), but by the apple pie. While I’ve changed my tune a bit and love catching up with all my relatives, that apple pie is still number one on my list and any Christmas it isn’t there just feels wrong. Just in case you’re wondering, this wasn’t pie and cheese or pie à la mode, this was such a great apple pie that putting anything else beside it just paled in comparison. Gingerbread: I don’t know when and where gingerbread really entered into my Christmas mindset. I don’t recall making gingerbread houses in my youth, though I’m sure it must have happened at least once or twice at home if not at school, but since time immemorial, it’s been something that reminded me that the Christmas season is about. Maybe the birth of my two youngest, very- redheaded siblings, who are a decade younger than I, has something to do with it, but I doubt it. The taste of gingerbread is something that just feels a little out of place when there isn’t snow on the ground and the promise of time with friends and family on the horizon. I would go so far to say that, aside from the Christmas season, gingerbread is just something I can’t stomach en masse. Something about Christmas (or maybe something about the next item on the list) just makes it easier to enjoy. Eggnog: Unlike gingerbread, I have a definite memory that makes this seasonal drink the best thing since chocolate milk. In my youth, we made our own eggnog. The smells of the ingredients filled the house and I knew, then and there, that Christmas was on the horizon. The store-bought kind is great, don’t get me wrong, and I’ll buy more cartons of it than I really should, but to me the best-tasting kind is the kind that I used to make with my younger sister Tory and parents at home (this particular practice predates the birth of my other siblings). Eggnog just makes everything else about the Christmas season better. Apple pie tastes a little better when you pair it with the ’nog and, as previously stated, you can eat more gingerbread when it’s paired with this perfect Christmas beverage. Cinnamon: I don’t know if you noticed, but pretty much everything I’ve listed thus far contains (or can contain) some amount of cinnamon. I’m not saying I eat cinnamon here. I, unlike many of those people out there who were perfect poster-childs for Darwinism, did not participate in the Cinnamon Challenge (trying to swallow a spoonful of the potent stuff). Unlike the previous three entries on the list, this item is purely for the olfactory enjoyment it provides. Gingerbread has the tinge of ginger and cinnamon, apple pie is great with a dash of cinnamon on top and if you make your eggnog without cinnamon, well then you’re just plain nuts. Some of the other items, further down the list, also contain the super spice. The smell of cinnamon might as well, in my mind, be the official smell of Christmas. Apple Cider: I do love apples. Sliced apples, whole apples, apples with caramel drizzle, candied apples, deep-fried apple chips (my own creation fueled by not having any potatoes one Christmas eve in school), apple pie, apple crumble... I’m like the shrimp- obsessed character in Forrest Gump, except with apples. Apple cider is the perfect spacer for eggnog. Eggnog is great but, in mass amounts, it can lead to some stomach churning so you need to space it out. A glass of apple cider, just brought to a boil in a deep pot on the stove, stirred with a cinnamon stick is a great way to limit your ’nog intake and is just great on its own. It also fills a house with a smell that I would surround myself with year-round if I weren’t worried it would suddenly lose its allure. Meatballs: Okay, this one may seem a bit out there but my father, as well as members of his family, usually make meatballs for Christmas. Don’t ask me what kind, the recipe is a mystery to me and, sometimes, a mystery to my father. Anyway, the smell and taste of the meatballs and the sauce in which they’re cooked for hours in a crock pot has just become synonymous with Christmas for me and it always messes with my head a bit whenever he makes them at any other time of the year. Fire: Okay, so this is new, but sitting in front of a fireplace, despite my family having one for several years, never appealed to me until recently. The smell of the heat in the air, be it from a gas fireplace or a wood stove, just reminds me of Christmas. I hope it continues. Denny Scott Denny’s Den It’s beginning to smell a lot like Christmas Adult supervision Often when I cover local council meetings, I can safely respond with “same old, same old” when somebody asks me what happened. Last week, however, I experienced a true first, albeit one that will be remembered, for me anyway, for its infamy. Local Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers were required to keep order at the Dec. 3 meeting of Huron East Council. To the surprise of nobody who has followed Huron County politics in the last five years, it was wind turbines that caused tempers to flare and people to get out of control. Wind turbines have been the county’s top hot button issue for the last number of years, and as many projects get closer to being realized, frustration for many is boiling over. So as council attempted to debate several proposed agreements with two different wind turbine companies at the meeting, it was met with a chorus of heckling from members of Huron East Against Turbines (HEAT), an anti- turbine group that has been opposing a wind turbine development in St. Columban for several years. Unsure of his options and with HEAT members failing to follow meeting procedure, Mayor Bernie MacLellan threatened to essentially close the meeting to public, while allowing members of the local media to attend the meeting in the hall’s back room. While this seemed, at the time, as something that would be frowned upon from a transparency standpoint, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do in that situation. As the mayor of a municipality, running a meeting of an official political body, MacLellan should have the power, since he was elected by the people, to have a meeting free of interruption and disturbance. While members of the public are, of course, allowed to attend council meetings, at what point do they lose that right? After repeatedly stomping on meeting regulations that ban public interaction and ignoring direct requests from the mayor himself to stop interrupting the meeting, when have those in the audience done enough to lose that privilege? MacLellan’s seat was certainly one I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that night. Thankfully, as OPP officers arrived, a compromise was reached and the meeting stayed open to the public. I do find it disheartening, however, that police intervention is required for an event like a council meeting, which is supposed to be a formal and civil meeting of elected officials. As the son of a retired police officer, I can’t help but see it as a waste of police resources. With all of the crime and wrongdoing going on in the world, two police officers having to spend time babysitting two groups of adults who don’t see eye to eye seems like time that could be better spent elsewhere. I don’t have a horse in the wind turbine race, but it has certainly proven to be an issue that has brought out the worst in people, both proponents and opponents alike. Over the years I have covered Huron East Council, HEAT members and councillors have had civil conversations and they have had heated exchanges that have devolved into yelling matches and now, even worse. My hope is that when the proposed agreements next come to council at the Dec. 17 meeting, cooler heads will prevail, though I fear a calm exchange between the two parties, at this stage in the game, could prove to be a bridge too far.