Spring Break

 

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During this past winter of staying home, I looked forward to a spring getaway with my husband Will and our son Matt. With travel outside of Canada and our province of Alberta restricted this month, we booked a four-night stay in Canmore, an hour a half drive from our Calgary home and just outside the entrance to Banff National Park. 

Easter Monday, we drove directly to Banff and ate our turkey sandwiches on a bench by the Bow River. Despite the sunshine, a breeze made the 3 degrees Celsius (37.4 F) temperature cool for sitting out. We soon warmed up on our hike up Tunnel Mountain. Sections of mud and ice typical of early spring made us glad we'd brought our cleats. At the top, we rested on Muskoka chairs half buried in snow and enjoyed the panoramic views of Banff. 

Day two of our trip was sunny and warmer. Will and Matt went skiing at Lake Louise, while I spent a summer-like day in Canmore. In the morning, I checked out the local stores and bought a salad and bread for our lasagna dinner. My afternoon walk followed part of the town's extensive trail network. The rest of the day I read on our balcony, looking out at the Three Sisters and HaLing mountain peaks. Will and Matt had a perfect ski day -- sunny, warm, uncrowded, fresh snow from a weekend snowfall. I didn't envy them, since I'd preferred my lazy time.   

                                              Balcony view from our AirBnb apartment

Lake Louise ski hill

The weather turned cooler on our third day and cloud mingled with sun. We stayed close to Canmore and hiked up to Grassi Lakes, an icy trail we couldn't have managed without cleats. At the top, we were surprised and pleased to find the ice on the lakes had melted to reveal their clear, green colour. After lunch, we walked the riverside portion of the trail I'd done the previous day and continued farther. We talked about returning later this spring with our bikes to explore the whole Canmore pathway network.  

                                                                        Grassi Lake

              Former railway bridge on Canmore path - Will didn't hold the camera straight

Rain blew in that evening and we woke up to a snow-draped town. Matt's weather app forecast a relatively nice day at Lake Louise with only 17 percent chance of snow. We drove west. As we approached the village of Lake Louise, we hit steady snow and low cloud that made the mountains almost invisible. Hoping the sky would clear later, we opted for a morning hike through a wooded area. The snow continued, but we drove up to the famous lake anyway. Everything was so white, we could hardly tell where the lake ended and the mountains began. We gave up on a viewpoint hike and walked along the lakeshore. When we returned, blue sky started to appear and we left the lake in sunshine. 

Winter conditions at Lake Louise, summer on our Canmore balcony, in-between temperatures the rest of the time. That's spring in Alberta.

    

                                                             Lake Louise village trail

Will and Matt on our Canmore balcony

Are The Things We Can't Say or Write Getting Out of Control? By Karla Stover

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Near the turn of the last century, the swastika was a hugely-popular lucky charm and one much-loved by the Russian royal family. It graced the family's limousine, was stitched on the czarina's last diary, and Alexandra, herself, had drawn it on the window frame of their final prison. In 1920, the Völkischer Beobachter became the official newspaper of the Nazi party and had an "explosive story about the Czarina's swastika." 

Other symbols are gone but words and expressions linger and are often worse. For example, in today's paper, I learned that calling someone a "Karen" is bad. Apparently, it's "a term used by some to insult and stereotype white women." I sent the clipping to my cousin Karen suggesting she go by her middle name. Nor should anyone ever be called a "basket case." The term came out of World War I and was used to describe quadriplegics because they'd lost all their limbs and had to be carried in a basket.

"No Can Do" insults the Chinese; "Eskimo" insults the Inuits. "Long Time No See" is offensive to Native Americans, as is "Off the Reservation. When I was a kid, "Indian giver" was a common insult. Not anymore, no can we refer to a "Mexican stand-off."

"Spinster" and "Hysteria" go after women, and "Cat Got Your Tongue" is rude because the English Navy disciplined using a whip called the "Cat-o'-nine-tails and the pain was so bad, the victims couldn't speak.

A lot of expressions insult black people: "fuzzy wuzzy", for example. In the 1800s, British colonial soldiers referred to the people of a specific East African nomadic tribe as "fuzzy wuzzies" due to their dark skin and curly hair. "Mumbo jumbo" comes from Maamajomboo, a west African god. Tribal men, dressed like the god and tried to solve domestic disputes which included spousal abuse. "Tipping point" is supposed to mean when too many black people have moved into a white neighborhood. And no one refers to a black man as "boy" anymore.

One of the big no-nos is "Sambo." 

It started with the word, “zambo,” which the Spanish and Portuguese used during their Empire periods to describe a person who appeared more black than white, although there are also claims that it meant bow-legged or knock-kneed. In the 1852 book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, "the character of Sambo was one of the slave overseers" who worked for the cruel slave owner, Simon Legree. Then, Helen Bannerman, daughter of a Scottish minister who married a physician / officer in the Indian Medical Service and lived in India for thirty years, started writing stories for her children about "an Indian child navigating an Indian landscape" and called him Little Black Sambo. Sadly, her "text placed a narrative born out of Britain’s imperialist presence in India firmly within the landscape of U.S. civil rights activism and racial politics," and the rest is history.

"Honky" may be "a variant of hunky which came from Bohunk, a slur for various Slavic and Hungarian immigrants, but it could have come from a West African language known as Wolof where it means "red-eared person," or from a coal mining area in West Virginia where white miners lived on Hunk Hill, or from Honky -tonk music.

Most of these I never say or use in my writing, however, "basket case?" I have to plead guilty. 

But I think we're all trying. 

Fusing Ideas

            Over the years, I have dabbled in many different art forms. At one time, I made candles and wove baskets and macramé plant hangers. I learned how to quilt and to make pottery on a wheel. I tried my hand at watercolor and quilling, both of which were quickly set aside for lack of ability…and patience. For more years than I can count, I’ve had the pleasure of working with artist Kymm Hughes to learn the art of fused glass. The process of layering glass and combining colors and designs gives me a sense of accomplishment, much like when I finish writing a book.

Fused glass is different from stained glass. The temperament of the glass is different, and whereas stained glass is seamed together with foil and solder, fused glass is basically melted together in a kiln. In a nutshell, I start with a flat piece of base glass, then cut and lay out my design, gluing the pieces in place and then it is fired in a kiln. At this point it is still flat. Once cooled, it is set on a mold for slumping, which is the process of again heating it in a kiln until the glass “slumps” into the design of the mold, sometimes making a deep bowl and sometimes a dish with simple curved up corners.

                                                                                                                                    What is so much fun is creating the design for a piece. Sometimes the

glass needs to be cut very specifically to fit a space or a pattern. Other times, like the fish, I used only scraps I found in the bins to design the picture I wanted. Even the smallest pieces a glass are kept in different color tubs to be used at some later point.

            Since this is a writing blog, you know where this is going, right? It’s easy to see how similar creating a fused glass piece is to creating a story. Both start with a blank slate – paper, computer screen or piece of glass. Many times I start writing with no more than a basic idea for my story. Will it be straight romance like the bowl of flowers? Should I make it with overlapping colors and layers for a mystery? Are the characters intensely detailed and multifaceted like a mosaic? If you look at the multicolored abstract photo and the blue/sunflower picture, notice they both are made with rectangles but the overall finished pieces are so very different. I see that in my writing as well. I might write two contemporaries but the colorful characters, the difference in settings and the arrangement of scenes makes each story unique.

  

               

            Once in a while it’s fun to try something new and totally different. I wondered if I could put a small sand dollar in-between pieces of glass – basically adding something foreign to the mix. We didn’t know what the sand dollar would do – would it hold its shape while being fired or would it explode? In writing, that something different for me is writing time travel; a combination of present and past with a twist. Will the change in some basic element in the story create a new and different pattern, or will the whole thing explode on my computer screen and leave me with a gaping hole in my plot? There’s really no way to know until I try. That’s what I love about my time travels--all are totally unique in design and format.

            If you enjoy trying new things, I encourage you to search for a fused glass studio in your area. Sometimes classes are taught through colleges; sometimes by individual artists.  If you like reading something different, I invite you to try a time travel from my Books We Love library:

            Prospecting for Love

            Spinning Through Time

            Loving Charlie Forever

            Hold on to the Past

 

Here’s to trying something new.

 

Barb Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/