Do you know how to breathe to be happy and energized? Most people don’t. - by Vijaya Schartz

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I learned from Tai-Chi that proper breathing technique not only makes for a more enjoyable life, but it can also help you through stress, fatigue, and challenging emotions.

In today’s busy life, sitting at computers, driving to work, taking elevators, getting food delivered, not only don’t we get enough exercise, but it seems we have forgotten how to breathe.

Lung and breathing problems are the most common ailments among mature adults. Even for someone who never smoked, a lifetime of shallow breathing deprives the blood of much needed oxygen, which weakens the entire body, including the immune system.

But there is hope. Healthy breathing at any age increases serotonin levels (which makes us happy). It increases energy levels, boosts the brain power, and benefits the muscles, and all the organs in our body.

Most people breathe from the top of the lungs, lifting the shoulders, or worse, hunched over. Little do they know that the lungs are very narrow at the top, and wide at the bottom. If you only breathe from the top of the lungs, you only use 10% of your lung capacity. But if you breathe from the diaphragm, filling the bottom part of the lungs, you are using 90% of your lung capacity, significantly increasing the amount of oxygen going into your blood.

Simple exercise to train your body to breathe from the diaphragm: 

Lie down on your back (on the floor, a bed, a couch…). Place a hefty book on your stomach. As you inhale, try to make the book rise, and watch it fall when you exhale. If you do this at night before falling asleep, eventually your body will get into that healthy rhythm and keep it all night. In time, your body will relearn to breathe more deeply, and it will become your new normal.

Simple principles:

Breathe from the diaphragm. It provides more oxygen to your blood. If you are not used to it, it might make you dizzy at first. Just sit down. Your brain will quickly welcome the extra oxygen.

Always breathe through the nose. Mouth breathing doesn’t filter the air of impurities, nor does it change the air temperature before it reaches the lungs. And exhaling through the mouth might be too fast for your system.

Never completely empty your lungs. A small amount of carbon dioxide is still needed in the lungs to carry the oxygen to the blood. People who exhale too fast and too completely can go into panic attack mode. In that case, the doctor will tell you to breathe inside a bag. Guess what’s in the bag? The carbon dioxide you just exhaled.

Keep your back straight and shoulders down. You cannot fill the bottom of your lungs if you are hunched over.

These principles only apply to everyday life, they do not apply to special breathing exercises, like prana-yoga, and various meditation methods using the breath to achieve a specific state of consciousness.

And if you need feel-good books to place on your stomach, don’t forget these epic science fiction fantasy series.

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Happy Reading!

Vijaya Schartz, award-winning author

Strong Heroines, Brave Heroes, cats

https://www.vijayaschartz.com

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A Sticky Situation- by Jeff Tribe

 There is something particularly special about making one’s own maple syrup.

A penultimate Canadian practice Indigenous Peoples generously shared with settlers, it represents the year’s first harvest from a bounteous natural world. Traditionally, Canada’s First People would let the spring’s opening run of sap pass, respectfully viewing it as ‘for the tree’ before tapping into its flow of delicious sweetness.

The ‘how’ has changed over the centuries. One can only imagine the patience and commitment required to make the 40-to-1 transition from sap to syrup using heated rocks. A progression from those determined origins through steel pot and on past multi-pan wood-fired evaporator to gas-powered works of stainless steel efficiency on the back end of reverse-osmosis technology, digital readouts rather than ‘flaking’ off a scoop indicating the magical moment syrup has arrived.

Maple syrup is big business in Canada. According to Quebec industry statistics, that province’s annual production, accounting for over 90 per cent of Canadian totals, contributes $1.1-billion in revenue. Syrup can also be involved in big crime, as proven by The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist of 2011 and 2012, a true story stranger in many ways than fiction.

Amongst the ranks of professionals, there’s still room for a rag-tag band of crazies hanging a few buckets on sugar maples to keep family traditions alive. Boiling on a kitchen stove is a thing quite probably done but once given the attendant sweet stickiness. Wiser to get by with a pot or pan over some concrete blocks, a propane-powered turkey deep fryer, naphtha camp stove or upgrade to a customized barrel wood stove and a stainless steel pan inside a ‘sugar shack’ framed out of a former children’s playground set.

Just focus on the end result, rather than input costs and hours of labour required.

Whether producing hundreds of gallons or a few jars for family and friends, the process is essentially the same: a lot of time, a lot of work and one hopes, some amount of quiet satisfaction and enjoyment. In between adding wood to the fire, there’s ample opportunity to ponder the vagaries of the universe or alternatively, enjoy a good book, one might suggest for example, Jay Lang’s ‘Little Blue,’ ‘Brides of Banff Springs’ by Victoria Chatham, or Donalee Moulton’s March, 2025 release, ‘Bind.’

If you listen to enough bubbling sap you might also be struck by the progressive parallels between syrup-making and reading a novel. 

While inserting spiles into trees or opening a book’s cover, there is a general sense of where things are going. However, differences from author to author, title to title or year to year are what makes the experience uniquely interesting. 

Both processes start with a sense of excitement, one tapping trees to begin a flow of sap, the other words unfolding with an introduction to compelling characters and the various factors and forces driving them. The plot and sap both thicken with time, gaining depth and colour, the boiler and reader increasingly engaged in the effort. 

The final stages, culmination of much work which has gone before, are the most crucial. Pushing thickened sap the few final degrees toward syrup is a delicate art, much as an author bringing together disparate plot lines, challenges and conflict into a satisfying conclusion.

And whether straight up in a bowl, over ice cream, enhancing the flavour of good, Canadian whiskey, or alternatively, read from the deck of a cottage, one’s favourite armchair - or in front of a bubbling pan of hot sap - both offer a valuable experience enjoyable in their own right. 

Tribe, Jeff - BWL Publishing Inc.

Canadian Authors by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

 

 

 

https://books2read.com/Romancing-the-Klondike

 

https://books2read.com/Rushing-the-Klondike

https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike

 https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

      I am a proud Canadian author of over twenty fiction and non-fiction books in my long writing career. But I am just one of thousands of published writers from this huge country. Canada has had a long and illustrious history of producing world renown authors and books going all the way back to the 18^th century.

     Frances Moore was born in England in 1724. She was a well-known poet and playwright in England before she and her husband, Reverend John Brooke moved to Quebec City in 1763, for John to take up the post of army chaplain. During her time there Frances wrote The History of Emily Montague, a love story set in the newly formed Quebec province.

     The story is told through the voices of her characters by way of personal letters between the two. This is known as epistolary (of letters) type of writing and it was popular during the1700s in Europe. The Brookes’ returned to England in 1768 and the novel was published in 1769 the London bookseller, James Dodsley. The History of Emily Montague was the first novel written in what is now Canada and the first with a Canadian setting. Frances died in 1789.

 Ontario

William Robertson Davies was born August 28, 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario (ON). He grew up surrounded by books and he participated in theatrical productions, developing a lifelong love of drama. He attended Upper Canada College then studied at Queen’s University at Kingston, ON. He moved to Oxford, England where he received a Bachelor Degree in Literature from Balliol College in 1938. His thesis, Shakespeare’s Boy Actors, was published in 1939 and he began acting in London.

     William married Brenda Mathews, an Australian who was working as a stage manager. They moved to Canada in 1940 and he began a career as literary editor at Saturday Night magazine. Their first child was born in December 1940. Two years later he accepted the position of editor of the Peterborough Examiner in Peterborough, ON. During this time he wrote humorous essays under the name Samuel Marchbanks and wrote and produced many stage plays.

     In 1947, several of his essays were published in The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, and The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks came out in 1949. Davies used his early upbringing to provide themes for his novels and his first novel Tempest Tost was published in 1951. His second, Leaven of Malice, came out in 1954. In 1955 he became publisher of the Peterborough Examiner and his third novel, A Mixture of Frailties was published in 1958.

     Besides novel and play writing, and being a newspaper publisher, Davies taught literature at Trinity College at the University of Toronto from 1960 until 1981. He left his post as publisher of the Peterborough Examiner in 1962 and became a Master of Massey College, the University of Toronto’s new graduate college, in 1963. Along with his father William Rupert Davies and his brother Arthur Davies, William bought the Kingston Whig-Standard newspaper, CHEX-AM and CKWS-AM radio stations, and CHEX-TV and CKWS-TV television stations. His third book of essays, Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack was published in 1967.

     William Robertson Davies wrote a total of eighteen fiction and non-fiction books, plus fifteen plays. He won many awards for his writing including the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. He was named a Companion of the Order of Canada.

     William Robertson Davies died on December 2, 1995, in Orangeville ON.

 

Josiah Henson was born on June 15, 1789, into slavery in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland. When his family was separated by each being sold to different plantations, his mother pleaded with her new owner, Isaac Riley, to buy her youngest son so she would have him with her. Riley agreed and Josiah came to work for him. Josiah was twenty-two years-of-age when he married. He also became a Methodist Minister and was made the supervisor of his master's farm.

     In 1825, Mr. Riley fell on hard times and was sued by a brother-in-law. Henson guided eighteen of Riley’s slaves to Riley’s brother’s plantation in Kentucky. When he returned and asked to buy his freedom from Riley for $450.00 (350.00 cash and $100.00 IOU), Riley added an extra zero to the IOU. Cheated of his money, Henson returned to Kentucky. In 1830, he learned that he might be sold again so he, his wife, and their four children escaped to Kent County, in Upper Canada (now Ontario), which had been a refuge for slaves since 1793. That was the year Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe passed: An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province. While the legislation did not immediately end slavery, it did prevent the importation of slaves and so any United States slave who entered the province was automatically free.

     Josiah Henson worked on farms in Upper Canada before moving with friends to Colchester to set up a Black settlement on rented land. He eventually was able to buy 200 acres in Dawn Township and made the community self-sufficient. The settlement reached a population of 500 at its height, earning money by exporting black walnut lumber to the United States and Britain. Henson purchased an adjoining 200 acres for his family to live on.

     Henson served in the Canadian Army as a military officer. He led a black militia unit in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38. When slavery was abolished in the United States many residents of the Dawn Settlement returned to their original home. Josiah Henson and his wife had eight more children in Upper Canada and he remarried a widow from Boston when his first wife died. He continued to live in Dawn for the rest of his life and many of his descendants still live in the area.

     Henson wrote his autobiography The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as narrated by Himself. It was published in 1849 and many believe he inspired the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowes’ Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Henson then expanded his memoir and published it as Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life which came out in 1858. Since people were still interested in his life, in 1876 his story was updated and published as Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life: An autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson.

     Josiah Henson died on May 5, 1883 at the age of ninety-four.

It's a Kind of Magic by Victoria Chatham

 

COMING IN SEPTEMBER 2025

Writers have a lot of words to play with, roughly one million of them in the English language. How we choose them and in what order we place them eventually becomes the stories we tell and the books we read.

Some books are long, others short, and others in between, but in all those words lies magic. The magic holds us spellbound, so as readers, our only option is to turn the page to discover what the author’s characters have in store for us. Read a romance or a fantasy and succumb to the enchantment of that author’s creativity. Savour the words on the page.

My words

So, where did all those words come from? Research has shown that our million or so words have developed over the last fifteen thousand years since the end of the last Ice Age, giving or taking a century or two here and there. Reputed to be the oldest words in our language are ‘thou’ and ‘mother.’ Currently, the longest word in English is forty-five letters long and is a medical term referring to a lung disease contracted from inhaling fine silica particles. Check any good English dictionary for pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

It is not likely a reader would find that in a novel, but what about the shortest words? That good old stalwart indefinite article ‘a’ is the first that comes to mind, but don’t forget the pronoun ‘I’, which is always written in upper case. Numerous three-letter words exist, as any Scrabble player will appreciate, but not as many two-letter words. Of these, my favourite is the ubiquitous ‘up’.

At its most basic, its definition means moving to a higher position, but how many ways can it be applied? We wake up and get up. Topics come up. We call someone on the phone. We line up and can work up an appetite. A drain can be stopped up, so we open it up – or, more likely, the plumber does. We clean up the house, warm up leftovers, and respond to our teenager’s ‘Wassup?’ And then there is that universal, slightly risqué phrase referring to pregnancy, knocked up. 

Image from flashbak.com

There are several suggestions for its origin, but it likely dates from about 1760, when the Industrial Revolution developed in what was then Great Britain. The workforce needed to staff factories sprouting up like mushrooms was gleaned from the ever-increasing number of people moving from the country to towns and cities. Used to getting up as soon as it was light and going to bed when it was dark, these people radically adjusted their lives, as being late for work usually meant instant dismissal. 

The role of the knocker up was to tap on the bedroom window, making sure they were awake and preparing to go to whatever grimy hellhole employed them at low wages for twelve to sixteen hours a day, six days a week. The person doing the knocking, using a long pole with a knob or crown on its top, might be paid a small sum for the service. They might cover several miles in an area, walking up one side of the street and down the other. Once factory horns and reliable alarm clocks were invented, the practice of knocking up gradually died out, although, in one area in northeast England, it continued into the 1960s.

This post began with 'Writers have a lot of words to play with,' and the magic is I have only played with five hundred and fifty-six of them. There could have been so much more.

Victoria Chatham

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The day my computer crashed (and I how I survived the impact)

 The adventure started after a week of intensive editing and rewriting with D.L. Dixen, who is co-authoring the upcoming Pine County mystery, "Skidded and Skunked". Having set that manuscript aside to work on a more pressing task, my income taxes, I opened my computer and saw...the blue screen of death. Yep. That's a real thing. Digging a bit got me into a diagnostic that said. "No Hard Drive is Detected."

I was reasonably certain that not having a hard drive, where all of my files are saved, was a very bad thing. Some internet research on my smart phone confirmed that opinion. Bad. Worse than bad. Worse than really bad. Thoughts raced through my head.  Oh no! When did I last save my income tax worksheet? When did I last save the "S&S" manuscript?

I dug through my paperwork to find the computer's extended warranty information. Hmm. I bought the three-year extended warranty! Yay! The computer is...seven years old. Boo! 

The warranty information assured me that even past the end of the warranty, the provider (Geeks R Us) would be happy to evaluate the failure if I dropped the computer off and called back in a week. Minimum charge $149. (Additional $99-250+ if they actually repaired/recovered anything.)

Hoping to understand the problem, I went through a "root cause failure analysis." I determined the root cause was my mental imaging of smashing the computer on the sidewalk during the previous week's very slow Windows 10/11 conversion. Yes, the crash was my own fault. Karma got me for wishing the computer dead. Actually, my hatred may have been directed at the Microsoft engineer who decided it was to MY benefit to update from my functioning system to a new system that slowed my computer, frustrated me, and reformatted my files. I pulled out my thumb drive of backups and used my phone to verify that the most recent files had been saved. After a sigh of relief, I pulled the plug on the old computer, declared it officially dead, and went shopping.

A nice gentleman at Costco showed me a wonderful new computer, on sale for only slightly more than Geeks R US charge for evaluating and recovering the files from that hard drive. The new computer is lightning fast. It has more capabilities than I'll ever use and, as the salesman pointed out, has enough memory to record every movie that's ever been made! (Who would do that???)

 I took it home, plugged it in, inserted the thumb drive, and found all of my files. Yay!

Adding insult to the computer crash injury, the following week, my printer died. I feel like I'm in electronics purgatory! My mother, a pessimistic Swede, said bad things always happen in threes. Yes, my cell phone died the following week. With three, now functioning replacements, life moves on.

Hopefully, the computer change enhanced "Skidded and Skunked", the May release of the next Pine County mystery.

Check out the BWL website for D.L. Dixen's bio and links to all of my/our books.

Books We Love Home Page - BWL Publishing Inc.

Dixen, D.L. - BWL Publishing Inc.