Renewed Focus

I have to admit that the first few days of April are a blur to me.  The 31st of March was a daze and the first of April I spent buzzing off the walls.  The next few days I was pretty hyped but reality was easing in.

Now, I'm back to Herne.  I did some math and realized I don't have a whole hell of a lot of time before the end of school for the kids (The equation for 'a whole hell of a lot' is extremely complicated, so I won't go into detail here).  I'm hoping for a solid first draft by the end of June.

Other things have been happening.  BT Corner, the little park that our local Heritage Committee has been working on is getting ever closer to completion.  Last week metal face plates for concrete plinths and custom benches were installed

The custom benches set the right balance between function, beauty and style and mirror the industrial history of the Beatty Brothers to whom the park is dedicated.

.

These sandblasted stainless steel plates not only cover the faces of the unattractive concrete plinths that will each bear information panels on their opposite sides, but they send a message.  

Family.  Community.  Industry.

Yeah, that's the town I choose to live in.

And look at that - 

the benches even work...

Heritage

I'm dragging myself around today, travelling from coffee cup to coffee cup.  Last night was our final presentation for a series of Heritage Lectures at our local centre for the arts.  I have a little project that I spearhead.  It's a park in called BT Corner which commemorates the Beatty family who brought industry in a big way to our little town.  As part of our lecture series I presented on the park specifically and making heritage interesting and accessible in general.

This is the entry to the park - seen on this blog several times before.  Here's a little about the materials used and why.  The replica grist millstone pays homage to the very first industries in town.  Mills were the cornerstone of our community and without them and the agricultural landscape surrounding Fergus, the Beatty Brohters would never have come here.  The limestone boulders surrounding the millstone represent the building material of choice for buildings in this area.  The sandblasted stainless steel sign bearing the BT logo reminds us of the Beatty foundry which was located in the building directly across the street from the sign.

You can see the factory attached to the foundry in this picture.  The factory found reuse as the Fergus Market for many years before having a makeover five years ago and become the more upscale, Fergus Marketplace.  In the foreground is a dry stone wall which highlights the Scottish roots of the town.  It will house the interpretive panels.  It looks really, really nice.

And finally here's just a really nice shot of the stonecutter's hammer and the design drawings sitting on the wall as it was being built.

The lecture series seems to have been a success.  Turnouts were good, though I suppose you always wish there we more folks in the seats.

When I wasn't presenting, I had the pleasure of sitting with local actor, Colin Fox.  We spoke a bit and he seems a delightful man with a genuine concern for the heritage of his community.  We'd met briefly before at the Elora Writer's Festival and I've had occasion to bump into him at events around town.  I needed to tell him that he has thrilled my kids with his work on the animated tv show, Atomic Betty.

Work on Gerry has slowed as I find myself needing a little extra polish on Loremaster.  More on that as things develop.

A Giant

Today I have been writing about 2 giants.

The first is Gerry.  Gerry is the story about a young giant boy who finds himself without his parents.  Initially raised by a family of bears, Gerry feels a need to find others of his own kind.  After falling in with a bad crowd of Rock Giants, Gerry befriends a human girl who helps him on quest to find his parents.

I started Gerry when my daughter was very little.  Although I've told the story aloud a few times, I've never put it down on paper.  I figure I should get on that before my daughter is too old to enjoy it.

The other Giant is this one.  The park being built by our local Heritage Committee pays tribute to this key Industrial family which contributed to the success of our town.  I've been cobbling together the information plaques for the park.  I'll be passing along the info I put together for the plaques onto other members of the committee and the folks at our local Archives for checking.  The last thing I want is some amateur historian pointing out inaccurate information after the plaques are printed.

Man, give me fiction any day.

A piece of paper, a prediction and a grant

Well, this came in the mail the other day...

It also arrived with a little hand written note from Melissa Edwards, the managing editor, congratulating me on my 3rd 3 Day Novel entry.  The certificate will be tacked to the bulletin board with the other two along with  this:

 

That is my best guess at the identity of the winner of the 2010 3 Day Novel Contest.  Here's a hint - it's not me.

This afternoon I headed off to our township's council chambers for a little meeting and ran into one of the reporters for the local paper.  He has entered the 3 Day Novel Contest in the past and we spoke of the results, our respective efforts and how there doesn't seem to be much of a market for fiction of a length that can be produced over a long weekend.  That said, my polishing of Herne continues.

Now, why was I at the council chambers this afternoon? A while ago I mentioned a bit of good news that I wasn't able to talk about regarding our Heritage Committee's park, BT Corner. You remember the pretty entry sign?

I am happy to report that I was on hand to announce to council our success in receiving a grant to cover most of the costs for the outstanding portions of the park.  There's still a statue and another grant to write, but it was gratifying to know that the funds are there for the park to be essentially finished this spring.

Strange and wonderful...

It has been a week of strange and wonderful things.  I have been plodding ahead with a synopsis for The Edgeling and have been moving (slowly) forward on Gerry.

Something strange to begin with - it seems after twenty-two years good old Duffer (who lately has more than his fair share of "Bill the Cat" moments) has decided to stave off Alzheimer's by challenging himself with new skills.

He's decided to start with Beatrix Potter.  Good choice, Duff.

Now onto something wonderful.  My little time-consuming park project, BT Corner.  Most of the landscaping is done.  The wall is all but finished and the paving stones are in.  There are a few touches left for this autumn, but then I can take a break from the park (for the most part) until Spring when there will be planting and benches and information plaques to contend with.  Here's how the Corner looks today:

I especially love that red maple.

Something else wonderful - this:

Is that?  Could that be?  No....no one would ever-

Yes.  That's Nature's Perfect Food, right there.  Bacon, and lots of it.  That is a bacon, potato and cheddar tart, my friends.  I wish I could take credit for this flavour treat/ heart attack on a plate but that honour goes to PEI chef, Michael Smith.

Here's what it looks like inside:

Trust me - all you need with this is the salad (and maybe a defibrillator).

Now on to strange and wonderful.

I love my town.  We are blessed with hundreds of heritage homes built from local limestone by the skilled hands of masons long dead.  One of these buildings is our own Carnegie Library.  It is a stately building and last night, as I waited for my daughter to finish her piano lesson, I snapped this shot - just in time for Hallowe'en.

This really is the only way to light a building like this.

And speaking of lights...Remember Trixie, the albino black cat.  Well here she is, mounted and lit, just in time for Hallowe'en.

Hard Frost

It has been a while since my last post.  Thanksgiving has come and gone and the first really hard frost hit us the night before last.

A few weeks back the family headed out to the farm I grew up on to make a few repairs to my mother's house.  While we were there I took the kids for a walk around the perimeter of the property.  A lot has changed since I was growing up there and yet a lot remains the same.  During the walk every hundred yards or so we'd sample the ripening apples on the trees we passed that grow in the fence rows.  Apart from the tree in the barnyard with the enormous pie apples, I don't really recall sampling the fruit from the trees scattered along the edges of the property.

We were surprised at the variety and the bounty.  Some were tart but one tree has these amazingly sweet apples.  Most are snow white on the inside.  One tree has whitish flesh with red tints bleeding through.  All of the trees were heavily laden and all about was the evidence of deer.  Apparently the trees are a favourite among the local ungulate population.

Last weekend we made an afternoon trip during a break from what has seemed like constant rain to pick apples.  Here's what we came away with:

We've now sorted and stored most of these apples in the root cellar and the rest have been made into sauce and used in cooking.  The front porch still smells comfortably of apples.

With Thanksgiving came the fall colours.  Some trees are mid-change:

Others have completely changed like this great tree just down the street:

And others, like this one in our front yard, have lost their leaves completely:

In writing news, I continue to plod away at Patriot.  I haven't been writing as much as I would like.  Holidays and school PD days have been playing havoc with anything like a schedule, as has the park I am working on for our local Heritage Committee.  Yesterday I returned to a project that has been shelved for a while and since the story starts on a sunny autumn day it seemed appropriate for me to work on it while the sun shines and the leaves blow in whirlwinds among the trees.  The story?  My children's story about an orphaned giant who has to find his way in the world.

Speaking of the Heritage park - BT Corner is coming along nicely.  The stone wall is being built.  It's a joy to watch the masons work.  They're real craftsmen and I am a huge fan of craftsmanship.  Yesterday they began to lay the paving and I'm thinking today they might be in a position to level the limestone screening.

Here's where we stand as of about 6 o'clock last night:

Coming along nicely...

Playing Catch-up

In this post I'll try to do a little catch-up.

First of all - Baby Skunk Up-date... Last night I went out to check and one of the adventurous little fellas was walking the edge of the rail fence near the front of the house. Although he is about the cutest thing in the world, I don't want him around the house. Last night I tried to convince him that I am a large predator and that it is not safe for him and his siblings around here. I jumped up and down and loomed over the little guy, waving my hands and making noise.

Utterly fearless. He didn't even turn around and show me his tail. He arched his back and stood his ground. I wish I got a photo of that - fierce, yet adorable. I ended up tossing a wrapped newspaper in his general direction and that seems to have sent him on his way. We'll see.

BT Corner was dedicated last weekend. Here's a link to the picture in one of the local papers. It rained all day, but the ceremony was well attended.

Here's a picture of the signage:

Very pleased with the result. The rest of the park should be completed over the summer and into the fall. The great job done on the entry stands as the benchmark of quality that the rest of the park will need to meet.

Father's Day - always a hit - This year I received hand-made gifts from the kids - a portrait from the boy and a wallet from my daughter - entirely made from duct tape!

The purchased gift was Chef Gordon Ramsay's Cooking for Friends.

Finally - the end of school. Kids are done for the year and a long summer stretches before us. This year my summertime writing will be tempered by keeping an eye on two active adventurous kids. I have no idea how it will work out, but I know it'll be an experience.

Wheels

Wheels seem to be the theme of the day. A short while ago impact with a noble woodland creature resulted in this:

A tragedy for the deer, no doubt. And the loss of a convenience we had grown accustomed to. A second car has always been a given for us, but we were rethinking the wisdom of it leading up to the accident. The decision made for us, we moved down to a single car.

Many people have applauded this move. "Good for you!" they say. "I am so proud of you guys!" "That's so environmentally friendly!". The truth is, if finances allowed, we'd have had another car in a heartbeat.

Both my wife and I were farm kids, raised in the Ontario countryside where a car wasn't just a nice thing to have - it was a necessity. Now that we live in town do we really need a second car?

Well....no - but, it's still such a handy thing to have.

So how does one adjust to being carless after having constant access to a set of wheels since the age of sixteen? One gets a second set of wheels with his price range.

This is my new sweet ride. I did the math and this is my first new bicycle in 32 years! I have not ridden a bicycle since I rented one from the train station in Bruges in Belgium about 20 years ago. That bike was a nightmare surplus thing that I am sure had fled Nazis at some point in its history - only it was such a shitty, chain-skipping monstrosity that it must have fled them none too quickly...

Bikes have come a long, long way. Gear changing is no longer some esoteric combination of the two little levers mounted beyond easy reach between the handlebars. A flick of the thumb and a clear display now let you know exactly

where you are as you effortlessly traverse the 21 plus gears at your disposal. The seat, while still ass-numbing, has lost most, if not all, of the testicle-bruising harshness of the bicycle seats of my youth.

I am well pleased with my new bicycle.

The other wheel I'll talk about is the one at the entry to my town's newest park. Last Friday we began the physical work on the site of BT Corner. Our main entry consists of a replica mill wheel surrounded by limestone boulders. The millstone symbolizes the town's earliest industries, while the blocks represent the building material of choice for Fergus' early masons.

The millstone started out as a single squarish slab of limestone that weighed close to 2200 pounds. It was rounded down and chipped away into its final wheel form but still weighs an impressive 1700 pounds. It will be surrounded by plants - junipers and such - and will have a sandblasted stainless steel sign mounted above the diamond-shaped cut-out.

Following our official park dedication on Saturday at noon I'll post pictures of the completed entry, but here's what's on the ground so far:

Front

Back

P.S. I do have some writing related news, but it'll wait until the next post.

The sick things I look at...and a lovely little Corner

I have spent the last couple of days immersing myself in the flu.  

All kinds of flu - avian flu, swine flu, horse flu, dog flu - even duck flu.  All of them - potentially the next great pandemic that will shake we humans off the earth's back like so many fleas off a dog.  

I have also been going over the numbers for SARS.  All of this is background material as I flesh out Patriot.  SARS appears to have been the global wake-up call for serious pandemic planning and we are seeing the effectiveness of that planning with the handling of the current swine flu outbreak.  

The problem is, in Patriot, the world's Pandemic Plans need to fail - and catastrophically so. Hence the research.

Beyond obsessing over horrific respiratory diseases and influenza, it has been a fairly fruitful week.  As I have written before, I am a member of the local heritage committee.  I also chair the BT Corner Sub-committee.

"What's a BT Corner?" you might ask.

This is:

And here it is in three dimensions:

It is a small park that commemorates an industrial and social powerhouse in my community.  In 1874 a pair of brothers came to Fergus and started a machine shop which grew into, at one time, the largest producer of farm implements in the British Empire.  Those brothers were George and Mathew Beatty and their company was Beatty Brothers Limited.

We've been raising funds etc for some time and had a bit of luck last week.  The Grand River Agricultural Society has generously donated $15,000 over the next three years.  Thanks to them, our little commemorative park is a definite go.  

Next time I'll add a bit more about the Corner, but for now it's back to the Pandemic...