Photo by Margaret Buffie - "Snow Flower Cave"

 

February

O Master-Builder, blustering as you go
About your giant work, transforming all
The empty woods into a glittering hall,
And making lilac lanes and footpaths grow
As hard as iron under stubborn snow,
Though every fence stand forth a marble wall,
And windy hollows drift that shall your might o’erthrow.
Build high your white and dazzling palaces,
Strengthen your bridges, fortify your towers,
Storm with a loud and portentous lip;
And April with a fragmentary breeze,
And half a score of gentle, golden hours,
Shall leave no trace of your stern workmanship.

1910

Early Canadian Poet



AGNES ETHELWYN WETHERALD (1857-1940)

The first decade of the twentieth century was A. E. Wetherald's most productive, and saw the publications of three books of poetry. A review of The Last Robin: Lyrics and Sonnets (1907) in The Globe said, “The salient quality of Miss Wetherald’s work is its freshness of feeling, a perennial freshness, renewable as spring. This has a setting of harmonious form, for the poet's ear is delicately attuned to the value of words, both as to the sound and the meaning.”

Thanks to Keryn Huenemann for introducing Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald to me on the blog "Canada's Early Women Writers"  http://ceww.wordpress.com/ , and to this poem for my February blues!!

A quotation of hope: Is spring coming? What is it like?

“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”

Frances Hodgen Burnett, The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden is one of the great classics of children's literature.

This photo was taken in my own garden last year. It is a Morden Blush Rose. Its smell is tender and sweet. I am longing for spring and roses and rain falling on sunshine.

Quote of the Week: On the necessity of writing every day - By Vta Sackville-West

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.”    Vita Sackville-West 

I'm taking this to heart right now.

One of my favourite books (and one of the best short series made for TV starring the brilliant Dame Wendy Hiller) is Sackville-West's  "All Passion Spent." I do not have my own copy of this book and order it from the library each time - for fear they will one day remove it. Ordering books keeps them alive in the library system!

We visited Sackville-West's garden at Sussinghurst when we were in England. Magnificent!

I have always had real flowers somewhere in my home - picked from my own small garden or from anywhere I can find a pretty bunch of them for sale in the winter. So I agree with Vita Sackville-West when she says:

"A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but
even one solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it."
Vita Sackville-West

Vita's Desk, Sissinghurst Tower

Here are two readers' emails sent to me recently that I thought were wonderful. Thanks to Khushi and Christopher! (These will be posted with the books referred to as well.)

"I'm 12 years old and i just finished reading your book called Winter Shadows and I have to say, i loved it! It's probably something you hear all the time...but anyway, I loved the way you sculpted the book, I loved the way you showed Beatrice's cluelessness to her love towards Duncan, it was so sweet but, i didn't like Robert he's to uptight, no fun, my idea of fun is kinda weird but, it's fun for me to curl under the covers with a good book and the fireplace crackling, hearing the soft rain touching my window......well anyhow I nearly cried when Cass was always fighting with Jean and never forgiving herself for not being there when her Mother died, it's, like this weird feeling inside me, very few books can do that to me. I'm sort of a writer myself but my books aren't really all the spectacular.....i do hope you read this email, even if you skimmed, thanks for listening!

A very big fan,
Khushi  -- "

 Hello Ms. Buffie,

Once again, I've read and explored your novel, Who is Frances Rain? and
once again I've uncovered yet another layer I did not know existed...

I've taught your novel to my grade sevens for over ten years now and I
never tire of it. Sometimes I read it aloud - while they follow along
with their copy - and sometimes I get the students to read it. I've
always felt that the plot was perfect for this age group and more
importantly the many themes of change, acceptance, and growing up, to
mention just a few... For that reason alone, it deserves a hallowed place
in my classroom.

Each time I've read the book I've been intrigued by its many teaching
possibilities. Early in our use of the book, it was always a great
springboard for important discussions about divorce, sibling rivalry and
the beauty and importance of grandparents. I also use it for exploring
journal writing and point of view. Sometimes students will journal write
about things going on in their world and sometimes write from Lizzie's
point of view at critical points in the novel.

As I read the novel aloud, I often pause to celebrate how real all of your
characters are, including your minor ones. I take the time to let the
kids enjoy your description of Harvey, which is so so colorful. And then
when Lizzie and Alex go to pick him up at his shack, the description of it
is so appropriate and really a description of him, which is really the
case in the real world. We actually take the time to create a visual
representation of it.

One day, as I was reading, all of the figurative language suddenly
appeared to me. I don't know why it took so long, but it did. It made me
rethink my way of teaching. This may seem like a trivial point at first,
but I used to teach my literary terms / devices by genre and figurative
language was included in my poetry terms. And then I thought... How
limiting, to call similes, metaphors, and personification poetry terms.
It was indirectly telling my students that these terms only have a place
in poems.

Thanks to you, I now explore these terms with my students as literary
terms and encourage my students to use figurative language in all forms of
writing.

Your first novel? Wow! Who is Frances Rain? is the work of a true master
storyteller."

From a grade 7 teacher, Christopher ---  from Newfoundland

My daughter made these gorgeous sugar cookies with candy windows for her daughter's school class. What could be sweeter than

that?

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND READERS!

FOR THE LOVE OF READING

For Valentine's day I chose the quote below,

because I reread all the books I love over and over again.

One day I will make a list!

"Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread. ~François Mauriac

Paperback edition of WINTER SHADOWS coming out September 11th.....

Finally! Winter Shadows will be released in paperback on September 11, 2012, and is now available on Amazon for pre-ordering!

Still going strong....

Charles Dickens

"Only jolter-headed, conceited idiots suppose that volumes are to be tossed off like pancakes, and that any writing can be done without the utmost application, the greatest patience, and the steadiest energy of which the writer is capable."   Charles Dickens

A great quote, and one that many new and seasoned writers can take something from; and will, in the doing, attend to their writing with three vital ingredients:

1) Utmost application

Putting one's backside onto a chair in front of a table and writing - something, anything, every day.

2) The Greatest Patience

Allowing for mistakes, allowing for changes, and rewriting and rewriting, editing and re-editing.

3) The Steadiest Energy they are capable of.

No matter how confused and tattered one feels, to never to give up.

But the real secret is offered up, beautifully, by Dickens' acknowledgement that any writer must believe in what they are writing about. Completely.

"I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing." Charles Dickens

Quote of the Week - For the Love of Reading....

"I had just taken to reading. I had just discovered the art of leaving my body to sit impassive in a crumpled up attitude in a chair or sofa, while I wandered over the hills and far away in novel company and new scenes... My world began to expand very rapidly,... the reading habit had got me securely."

H. G. Wells

What is it about some houses that makes us uneasy?

I was walking slowly past a particular house the other day (not the one above) - one that I often see on my now much shortened walks (a knee injury!) - and, once again, felt that deep inner recoil I always do whenever I'm near this place. I have no idea who lives there, but there is just something about its very presence that causes me to shrink from it with a feeling of uneasiness - almost dread.

When I  was researching My Mother's Ghost, my husband (of Scottish heritage) and I went into an old Alberta ranch house built in the late 19th C.  It was a typical ranch house of the time - a little worn around the edges, but it had been refurbished and set up in the 1980's as a guest ranch. We made it down the hall and into the kitchen and, there, my husband (whose grandmother was "fey" and who, himself,  has strong psychic connections at times) walked right out the back door and would not return to the house. He said to me he'd felt a heavy weight fall on his shoulders, and one section of the room was misted with a thick gray film.

The woman who owed and ran the guest ranch nodded when I asked her about the house - and said, very matter-of-factly, that the place had been haunted for years - and they had lost a number of workers because of it. Now this was ideal for my story about a family in grief who buy an old haunted ranch house! It felt like kismet. This place was perfect! But I also knew I wouldn't want to live there!

What is it about houses? Can they really hold the spirits of those who came before us? Can houses be sad for years on end, because of "things" that happened inside them?

Is it us? Can a human spirit in turmoil do this to bricks and mortar?

Or perhaps, when we recoil from a house, it is because we are affected by our own buried memories of something; something that has nothing whatsoever to do with a particular house.

Of course, abandoned houses can spook some people because they are empty, and crumbling, and have no one to look after them. They also remind each of us of our own fragile vulnerability in many ways as well.

I had encounters with two old and empty houses as a kid - and got caught with some friends exploring one of them. We were chased out by a man who seemed to appear out of nowhere, but it was clear he was no ghost! We scattered like rabbits. He didn't stand a chance of grabbing one of us! That house was old and empty, but not particularly scary. We just wanted to poke around in it. The other one was different. I'm keeping that story for another book one day ... :-)

But there are houses that seem to reek with something that repels some people. Why?

Of course, movies and books have often used typically Gothic-style houses to advance the idea of madness, horror, and fear. Like Norman Bates's house in Psycho, which was created to look like a house that simply had to be filled with insanity and crazy goings-on. Much like the rather bizarre and very real Alwyn Courts Apartments that Ira Levin chose for Rosemary's Baby.

But the house I walk past fairly often, is a perfectly ordinary early 1900's house. It's fairly well cared for. People live there. In summer there are rigid rows of marigolds in its front flower beds. Yet ... I'd be very hard-put to actually walk through the door of that house!

When I began to write The Warnings (originally called The Guardian Circle), I dug out a book from 1903, one that my husband's family had had for years - a large bound photo-filled book of black and white images used to promote Winnipeg businesses, banks and posh houses from that time. I looked for "my guardian circle house" in that book. Found a few that might suit, but none were exactly what I was looking for.

I did find it when I went to a local museum called Dalnavert (the house above) just by accident, really. Dalnavert is one of the finest examples of Queen Anne Revival architecture in Winnipeg, and is the restored home of Sir Hugh John Macdonald, who had it built in 1895. Hugh John was the son of Sir John A. Macdonald - one of our most famous Prime Ministers -  and was a lawyer who became Premier of Manitoba. When Hugh John died in 1929, his wife no longer wanted such a large house, and sold it. Their only son, John Alexander had, sadly, died of diabetes at nineteen years of age in 1905. We were told by our guide that the son died in the large attic area which had been used as a play room when he was young. Not sure if that's accurate, but it hit my creative bone with a tingle.

The house was sold and used as a rooming house for almost 40 years. It is believed to be haunted - of course! I decided the lay-out and look of the house, and its history as a long-time boarding house, were perfect for my needs. And the odd thing is, I didn't feel repelled by this old building at all, but did feel wonderfully immersed in Winnipeg history.

Under the staircase

The stairway that Luther Dubbles loves to "fall" down - just for the fun of it - in The Warnings

Writing about ghostly comings and goings is something that has always intrigued me; and houses, cottages and old stone buildings are often the settings I chose to use.

But I'm still not going to ask to see inside that house I pass when I go for my walks!