The book I've been writing since I found out I was going to be a dad by Tobias Robbins

 

https://bookswelove.net/robbins-tobias/

Since I first found out I was going to be a dad, I have been writing a book to my daughter. I am going to give it to her when she is older. This is the chapter concerning her birth. 

 

April 19th, 2014. 11:30 p.m

    Your mother's water broke a few hours ago. We were with the rest of the family at Aunt Becky’s hiding Easter eggs and playing board games. It wasn't even noticeable like in the movies. We headed to the hospital just in case. Now your mother is lying in the electronic reclining bed beside me, texting everyone she knows. I am writing this to you on the back of a printed copy of a poem from my collection. You are slowly pushing your way out of your mother’s uterus. We will be a family in a few more hours. I should have known you would be born on Easter Sunday - the symbols of life and natural creation are implied but its more than that. I was told. The doctor said you were due last Sunday and while on a short walk, we found a tiny bird egg. It was about the size of a quarter, light blue, and had speckles on it. I have gone on countless walks in and out of animal habitats and never seen a bird egg. I am not an expert but I think it was a robin’s egg. I knew then that you would be born on Easter. Your mother’s contractions are getting worse now but it's still bearable. Your grandma Sue should be here soon to do her best to alleviate any stress she can for your mom.

April 20th, 2:00 a.m.

    Though I am notorious for panicking in stressful situations I feel surprisingly calm- maybe it doesn't seem real yet. Soon the fluids will spill and the screams should start. Probably then my anxiety will rise. But I’m not a doctor. I’m not Mother Nature. This process is utterly out of my zone of control. All I can mitigate are my own responses to stimuli. While we wait for you to arrive I am reading a book called Kabuki, the Alchemy. In it, the protagonist says "If you are faced with a certain challenge perhaps it is the universe’s way of trying to show you something. You ask yourself, 'What am I meant to learn from this? How is this meant to push me in the right direction?’ " I'd happily take this pain from your mother. Pain and I are casual acquaintances. But chaos? Oh god no! Birth is chaos at its most primitive. It’s all out of my hands, I must accept my helplessness in this situation and let fate use me as it sees fit.

April 20th, 4:30 a.m.

    Your mother has never felt pain. Not real pain. Till now. No stitches, contusions or broken bones. To her credit, she tried her best to avoid drugs during the labor, but couldn't handle it. I wouldn’t have lasted as long as she did. Imagine the worst pain you can; that feeling in your mind's eye is just a shadow of the real pain of labor. A doctor gave her some drugs to numb her and I have no doubt it is worth the astronomical price he is charging.

April 20th, 6:15 a.m.

    The sun rises gold out the giant hospital window as I watch numbers flash on a monitor by your mother’s bed. 135, 60, 101. I have no idea what these numbers are. They equal the sum of your life plus your mother's. If these numbers are reduced to zero then a life will be subtracted. I have never been much for math. I try to ignore the indiscernible digits blinking on the screen and leave my stress there plugged into the wall. Let science worry. Let technology do the hard calculations. My job is simple: love your mother. Mine is the arithmetic of the soul.

April 20th, 7:45 a.m.

    We’ve been awake for nearly 24 hours, and now the hard part is about to begin. Your mother is working her damnedest to push you out into this world. So much effort for such a tiny thing. All the pain, the money, the planning. Every single day for nine months has led to this. I am here, your grandmother is here, and several medical professionals are here. But this is something you and your mother have to do on your own.

April 20th, 9:10 a.m.

    Done. Over with. Here you are. Your mom pushed you out with no problems. You have thick black hair and dark brown eyes. As you suckled for the first time I read you poetry. Now, if you will let me, I will get some sleep. Happy birthday.

 

My book, The Remnants of Pryr, comes out this winter. 

When one of the ancient founders of Pryr returns after a long exile and claims the world will end, the nations must adapt and learn to work together. If not, the Breath of Ruination will bring about a world-ending catastrophe. The kaleidoscopic cast, including gods, assassins, poets, and scientists, provides interlocking accounts in this geo-political drama that dates back to the founding of civilization.

 

 

September in Vermont

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What is September like where you live? 

morning had broken at the farm...

Here in Vermont it's a magical time. Each day brings surprises. It can feel like all of the seasons in a single day. Our mornings might hold the promise of spring, while the afternoon temperatures rise to the warm welcome of summer days. But by evening light we'll catch a glimpse of the vermillion color of the coming glorious Fall on the edge of a maple tree's leaf in the backyard. And deep in the night, it's time to haul out the extra quilt as temperatures dip into winter territory!

In September we get our frolicking children off to school and happily anticipate welcoming visitors from all over the world coming to see the incredible crisp beauty of Vermont in the autumn. We're baking....apple cider donuts, cobblers made of our summer bounties of peaches and berries. The air itself is infused with plummy richness of it.

our town after a September rainstorm

And September is a time that the light creek or lakeside reading of summer transforms itself into deeper stories kept in happy anticipation of their company for longer nights by the fireside.

Happy reading. Happy September!

Old Time Medicine

                                           Please click this link for book and author information

When I was a child, I read numerous novels written over a century ago, such as Anne of Gables, Emily of New Moon, and The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery. Characters who got sick in these stories routinely mentioned taking laudanum. I hadn't heard of this medicine but assumed it was similar to our everyday modern drugs. So I was surprised to later learn that laudanum is essentially opium. 

Anne of Green Gables took opium?

She almost certainly did. From the 18th to the early 20th century, laudanum was a common drug found in most household medicine cabinets. People took it for headaches, coughs, diarrhea, and "female complaints." They fed drops to babies to ease teething pain and colic. 

Drawings reveal that the juice and seeds of the opium poppy were used as medicines in ancient Assyria and Egypt. Opium treatment emerged in Europe in the 1660s, when doctors dissolved opium in liquor and added cinnamon, cloves, other spices and sometimes honey to mask the plant's bitter taste to create a drug they called laudanum. The medicine worked quickly and more effectively than other drugs available at the time and came to feature in about 25 % of all prescribed medications. Opium was also the secret ingredient in 19th century drugs advertised and sold under innocuous brand names like Dover's Powder and Winslow's Soothing Syrup.

While doctors appreciated the value of opium, they were aware of the dangers. Overdose, called "acute poisoning," could be accidental or intentional. Opium was the most common method of suicide in the 1800s and too many drops of laudanum tragically resulted in infant deaths.

Addiction, or "chronic poisoning," was another problem. Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's medical treatments led to a life-long laudanum addiction. His famous poem, "Kubla Khan," was inspired by an opium dream.  

  

The village of Nether Stowey, Somerset, UK, where Coleridge lived and wrote his poems "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

In the early 1880s, researchers isolated the active ingredient in opium and named it for Morpheus, the Greek god of sleep and dreams. Morphine is ten times as strong as the same amount of opium but can be more precisely measured, preventing overdose. Hypodermic needles were invented to inject morphine powder and soon people could buy hypodermic syringes in the Sears catalogue for $2.00. 

Next Bayer pharmaceuticals developed the even stronger heroin and marketed it with its other new drug, aspirin. Some people thought aspirin carried higher risks because it caused bleeding. 

But many doctors and members of the public pushed for restrictions on dangerous drugs. In the early 20th century, governments passed laws making opium and its derivatives only available by prescription and requiring companies to list ingredients on drug labels. Researchers gradually developed effective medicines with fewer serious side effects. Laudanum is still available today but is mainly prescribed to control diarrhea when other medications have failed. 

Why am I interested in old time medicine? It's because my new historical mystery novel, A Killer Whisky, deals with common drugs of the early 1900s. These also included cocaine - great for nasal inflammation - and whisky. During Prohibition doctors were allowed to prescribe liquor to relieve stress, pain, and other physical and mental ailments. Many people took advantage of that legal loophole and enjoyed the medicine's intoxicating side-benefits.  

References:

Halpern, John H., MD and Blistein, David. Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World. New York: Hachette, 2019.

Inglis, Lucy. Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium. London: Macmillan, 2019.

Malleck, Dan. When Good Drugs Go Bad. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015.

Hitler's Mein Kampf

     

A Line to Murder

    Murder: When One Isn't Enough

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            Once upon a time, an Austrian man was doing time in Landsberg Prison on charges of treason. Landsberg consisted of four brick-built cell blocks built in a cross-shape orientation.” This allowed guards to watch all wings simultaneously from a central location. The prison, which was used for holding convicted criminals and those awaiting sentencing, was also designated a Festungshaft (meaning fortress confinement). Its facilities were similar to modern protective custody unit. There was no forced labor, the cells were reasonably comfortable, and visitors were allowed. The Austrian’s sentence was five years and during that time, he received many visitors. However, his favorite pass-time was writing and he had plans for a two-volume book which the author wanted to call Four and a Half Years [of Struggle] Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. When volume one was done, the editors were his chauffeur, Emil Maurice, and his friend and confident Rudolf Hess. The author was, of course, Adolf Hitler. At his publisher’s suggestion, the book was retitled Mein Kampf in which Hitler outlined his political ideology, his plans for Germany’s future, and the reasons for his antisemitism. The book came out on July 18, 1925 and, much to the prison governor’s disappointment, initial sales were disappointing. If the book ran into enough editions, it would "enable Hitler to fulfill his financial obligations and to defray the expenses incurred at the time of his trial. However, following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, it became a best seller in Germany. In fact, it made so much money, Hitler eventually had a large tax debt which was wiped out (of course) when he became Germany’s chancellor.

“Through aggressive marketing, the publisher pressured the public, German institutions, and Nazi organizations to purchase copies. The Nazi propaganda machine's transformation of Adolf Hitler from a common German soldier and politician into an infallible, God-like leader greatly boosted sales as well. By the end of 1944, more than 12 million copies had been printed; most of them after 1939.” Eventually there were commemorative editions: for weddings, birthdays, Hitler’s birthday, and Braille editions. In 1934, the French government unofficially sponsored the publication of an unauthorized translation. It was meant as a warning. Since its first publication in India, Mein Kampf has gone through hundreds of editions, sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into various Indian languages.

Then the war ended.

    “In May 1945, the Allies began to systematically remove Nazi propaganda (including books, maps, films, statues, flags, and symbols) from Germany’s libraries, universities, stores, buildings, and city streets.”  They “removed Mein Kampf and other Nazi texts from circulation and prohibited their re-publication. American authorities subsequently transferred the copyright to the Bavarian government. The Bavarians “used their legal power to prevent the re-issuing of Mein Kampf in Germany and elsewhere, with the exception of the English-language versions. In spite of its efforts, though, the Bavarian government was never able to fully stop the reprinting.  Up until 2015, when its copyright expired, Bavaria accepted royalty payments for the book and then redistributed the money to various charities.

In the United States and “According to the Boston Globe, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has been publishing "a greatly abridged edition" since 1933 but only began donating proceeds from the book to Jewish-related charities in 2000.” Recently, however, it began donating 'funds to projects having nothing to do with the Holocaust or anti-Semitism,” said actions angering many Jews and Jewish organizations.

It’s hard to know what to do with any literature of this nature. The only person who had a legitimate claim to the royalties was his nephew Leo Raubal (Hitler's half-sister’s child), but Leo refused to have anything to do with the book or the profits. 

“Unfortunately, the publisher failed to recognize the sensitivity around this book," said Josef Blumenfeld, founder of PR firm EdTech180 and a former executive at HMH. "“I’m sure HMH was well-intentioned when it tried to broaden the use of funds" 

This barely touches what is an enormously complicated issue. I suggest watching Mark Felton's YouTube video on the subject.

Old Sayings and Chickens - Barbara Baker

 

My grandson hiccupped and said, “Who’s thinking about me?”

I turned to him. “Who taught you that saying?”

“You did.” He rolled his eyes. “You always say it.”

Well, blow me over. The fact anyone remembers what I say surprised me, let alone someone so young. And his response made me smile because I still ask the same question whenever I get the hiccups.

Once again, I trip down the Google rabbit hole but this time to find out where the saying came from. This is what I learned:

Folklore says getting the hiccups means someone is talking about you or missing you. It continued to say the trick to stop the hiccups was to go through all the people in your head and when you hit the culprit the hiccups would stop.

My mother never told me that part of the saying. Next time I get the hiccups, instead of holding my breath, I’ll recite names. Who knows, maybe someone important is thinking about me.

Since I was in research mode anyways, and because my grandson is responsible for this procrastination adventure, I check into the saying out of the mouths of babes. It owes its origin to Psalm 8:2 KJV where God ordains strength out of the mouths of babes. Today, the phrase has changed to praise a young person who speaks wisely. 

Here’s a good line for my procrastination endeavors – don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Benjamin Franklin created the original phrase - never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today. That’s a tough one to abide by when procrastination mode is in full gear.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch is said to be from the Aesop Fables although there is no confirmation of that. Hmm. I thought Google knew all.

You’re no spring chicken originated in the 1700s when farmers needed to sell their chickens while they were young and tasty. If they couldn’t sell them, they’d age through the winter and be less profitable. I’m not sure how I’ll react the next time I hear someone use the expression. It will probably depend on what time of year it is.

It seems chickens take a lot of heat as far as old sayings go. Here’s another one:

In the 1920s in the United States, a chicken dinner from a casino cafeteria cost under $2. And $2 was the standard bet for gamblers. When someone won a bet, they could buy a chicken dinner hence the phrase winner winner chicken dinner. Well, that one surprised me. My grandkids say it every time they win at cards or soccer or running races. I was positive they were the originators.

The knowledge I acquire when I procrastinate boggles my mind.

Here's a final one which has nothing to do with chickens, but you might think about it before you go to bed tonight.

Waking up on the wrong side of the bed is said to be a Roman superstition. They were always careful to get up on the correct side to ensure that good luck would follow them throughout the day. If they got up left foot forward or on the wrong side of the bed, they believed they would be surrounded by negative energy and have an unlucky day of it.

I hope you got up on the right side of the bed and have minimal hiccups throughout your day. Enjoy the September weather. Winter is always just around the corner in Alberta. 

Summer of Lies: Baker, Barbara:9780228615774: Books - Amazon.ca

What About Me?: Sequel to Summer of Lies : Baker, Barbara: Amazon.ca: Books

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