Two dozen realistic possibilities for your romantic lead to meet new people in one summer week in Vancouver

Two dozen realistic possibilities for your romantic lead to meet new people in one summer week in Vancouver:

1. On the SkyTrain or bus when it breaks down, and you have to walk with others to an unfamiliar bus stop.
2. The new cashier at a familiar store.
3. The helpful shelf-stocker at an unfamiliar store.
4. The swimmer who runs into you while swimming in the ocean; or paddle-boarder, windsurfer, kayaker, canoe paddler, etc.
5. The helpful lifeguard who warns you not to backstroke into a log.
6. The widow/er at the community centre drawing class.
7. The cute one whose bike chain has come loose, and you stop to help.
8. The person who comments on your dog, equipment, bicycle, fountain pen, outfit, etc. when you are at the beach.
9. The handsome officer who handles a drunken neighbour.
10. Your elderly relative's new tenant.
11. On the sidewalk outside a store, running into an old friend of your ex, who happens to be single now.
12. Volunteering for a race event or competition (swimming, triathlon, beach volleyball, etc.)
13. The Vancouver Folk Festival (literally hundreds of opportunities!); even the beach outside the Fest.
14. The person who happens to have bought an extra glass of wine at intermission at Bard on the Beach.
15. Outdoor workers at a site where a house is being renovated, and you are picking up unused apples from the yard of a boarded-up house.
16. A neighbour who wonders why you walk barefoot or bicycle in the rain or forage for weeds.
17. Your friend's cousin.
18. Someone seen through rows of blueberries at a you-pick farm.
19. A poet who shares your table at the bistro during an open mike poetry reading.
20. Someone gardening in a garden you go by and admire, or someone admiring your own gardening efforts.
21. The Fireworks! Boating, bicycling, beach-going ... Admiring officers on horseback.
22. Walking the labyrinth in Renfrew Ravine Park.
23. Hiking to Quarry Rock in Deep Cove.
24. Birding at Hastings Park early Saturday morning. 

And many more variations of these possibilities! Use your imagination.

Don't forget the usual touristy places: the Quay (Lonsdale or New Westminster), Granville Island, bars and sidewalk bistros, the PNE and horse races, etc.

No excuse for your fictional characters to be lonely. Go out and do some "research" people-watching.

Jennifer Getsinger
July 23, 2014

A Story from a Real Fireman

All those fantasy e-comments about cops and fireman sparked this tiny ember from one of my recent holiday jaunts. On a mid-July weekend near Tacoma, Washington, I went to the annual clambake of a family I've known for a long time (40 years since the first party I ever attended at their beach house). (The family's ancestral chocolate factory is still doing well in Tacoma, partly because of sweet-tooths like me, who continue to buy and eat chocolate while attempting a healthier lifestyle.) We're all slowly becoming the elders instead of the wild youth of yesteryear, some preferring inside beds instead of a bivouac on the beach by the totem pole, some leaving on Saturday for the comfort of home. But one of the fun and relaxing parts of this particular event is the ritual Sunday brunch for those of us who stay for the sleepover.

Brunch fare always centers around coffee and Krusteaz instant pancake mix (just add water and blueberries) and other potluck contributions (Mocha Roca, fruit salad, herbed potatoes, Cashew Roca, eggs, Macadamia Roca, fruit salad, Dark Roca, bacon, orange juice, Peanut Butter Mountain Bars, fruit salad, Almond Roca...). No matter how many clams we dig on Saturday, there are never any seafood leftovers.

Anyway, one of the fellows around the brunch table, a guy I'd never met before, is a recently retired firefighter from Tacoma. He's still fit and trim, blond and tanned, with sinewy arms and a huge smile, a really nice guy, named John. He told us funny anecdotes about a regular Tacoma troublemaker named Cecil.

Evidently firemen have to contend with regulars like Cecil all too often. This guy Cecil would get all drugged out and then pitch a fit to get attention. He'd lie on the street writhing with epilepsy. On purpose. So that someone would have to call the fire department, and then he'd get hauled off to the hospital or jail. It was a real frustration for the firefighters, because they kept having to waste precious resources dealing with this repeat offender. John said he'd finally had enough, so one day when Cecil was in the middle of an "epileptic fit", and said his leg hurt, John cut off one of his pant-legs to check on the leg. When Cecil came out of his drug-induced haze later, he was annoyed to find his pants were ruined. The next time Cecil pitched a fit and John was called in to deal with it, he bent down and whispered in Cecil's ear: "Does your leg hurt, Cecil?" and he cut off his pant leg again. Eventually it got to where all John had to do was ask "Does your leg hurt, Cecil?" and Cecil would suddenly come to and make tracks out of there, not wanting to lose another pair of pants. John taught some other firefighters this trick, and it probably saved the city of Tacoma thousands of dollars.

I'm not sure I got the story exactly right, but it was entertaining and at least somewhat true. Firefighters don't only look handsome and act like heroes, they tell good stories, too.

Shopping Tips: Forty years ago these same friends introduced me to Krusteaz instant "just add water" pancake mix, which we could take on mountain hikes. Krusteaz mix is still good. In Canada the only place to buy it is Costco, $7.99 for a big blue sack. The same flour mill makes the easy and excellent "Ghirardelli Chocolate Brownie Mix" but Costco was out of it last time I went looking for it. The factory outlet for Almond Roca is in Fife (east Tacoma), exit 136A off I-5; any Brown & Haley product can also be ordered online for a price.

Sweet dreams!
Jennifer Getsinger
July 22, 2014

Lexiphane

Welcome back, reading and writing audience. 

When I took my daughter Chilko on a road trip of New England, we stayed with our cousin Ann and played Balderdash, which is a word game where people make up definitions of real words and vote on the right answers. Ann, an artist, wiped us off the map winning almost every round by making up the best definitions and voting more consistently on the right ones. When I sent her the link to this article*, Ann replied: "I enjoyed reading that and having my suspicions confirmed about the oneupsmanship (that should be one word!) of using long words where shorter ones would give more clarity."

*Here's an article from Harvard about using big words:

http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/05/the-undergraduate-word-upmanship

Short, Hemingway style sentences are good for telling stories of what a man did or said.

Big words can give more clarity in technical situations or fields. For instance, a geological word like "diktytaxitic" is actually the shorter way of saying, "that texture in volcanic rocks in which the minerals angle against each other with tiny angular holes that are not round vesicles but interstitial spaces between the grains bounded by actual crystal faces". The geological dictionary usually adds that the word pertains especially to olivine basaltic rocks in the northwestern US, namely, the Columbia River Basalt. For more igneous rock terms:http://www.people.carleton.edu/~bhaileab/petrology/BH250Slides/CommonIgenousTexturalTermsandPhotomcirgraphys2.html

The joy of small words is that many of them are multifaceted and can mean different things depending on the context, and so the inherent ambiguity embedded in the English language comes into play. A word like "diktytaxitic" prevents most ambiguous interpretations, which is what a scientist wants, specificity. On the other hand, words like "set" or "so" or "sorry" can mean a lot of things simultaneously. [For instance, the Canadian sorry:http://cutlerish.tumblr.com/post/3573065230/canadians-say-sorry-an-awful-lot-but-they-rarely].

Chilko quoted Shakespeare the other day, "I saw the treasons planted" (Cleopatra speaking, Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene 3). Only in English would that spark double meaning in a person's brain, enriching the interpretation to include a mental picture of the growth of a forest of duplicities.

Thus, Shakespearean ambiguity might be good for what women have to say.

Note also the sexist biases implicit in the choice of a simple word like man or woman instead of person or people.

More word play to come.
Have a productive summer, even if your goal is 13 barbecues and a visible tan line.

Rock on,
Jennifer Getsinger
July 21, 2014

Looking for something that moves

Thanks for all the great feedback on yesterday's post.


Mary Ann's comment about how women map things out (remember where the food is kept), and men are just looking for something that moves--it's not so facetious. There are studies about how vision works, and how the brain works, and how different animals see things differently. Part of our vision alerts to contrasts in tone, and part to color. Some animals do indeed only see "something that moves". 

I saw a crow chasing a squirrel a couple of weeks ago, along the ground near the Skytrain. The squirrel got to the base of a tree, and then stopped, very still. I could still see the squirrel as obvious as anything up against the base of the tree trunk. But the crow stopped and looked around, suddenly lost. The squirrel had stopped moving, and had become invisible.

Some of our children, and more sons, in particular, have a hard time in school because they are too "ADHD", noticing anything that moves, and chasing after distractions. Take those same children out into the wilderness, and watch how those same skills could feed your family, could contribute to group survival. Sitting in the front of a canoe, or hiking in front of the group, my son would always be the first one to spot a river otter or a deer. A boy with darting movements could spear a lizard with a stick in the old days--this image came from a book about Australian aboriginals we looked at when the kids were little. I regretted that in our society we have so few places where the males of our species can use these innate hunting skills. The other day at the church camp on Sasamat Lake, some parents were complaining that kids were playing with "foam swords". What I noticed were the kids with sticks. It's natural for a kid to pick up a stick and want to hunt. Someone else muttered something sarcastic about "teaching kids to play with lighters" when a boy was asked to light the chalice for the worship service.

I think it's a good idea to teach our young these skills--how to use a stick wisely and to help the group; how to start a fire and control the flames. If they don't learn how to use our human tools safely, later in life they can really get in trouble. Like with guns, over-powerful fire-sticks. In the same vein, it's a good idea to teach them about edible plants, and how to shop economically, and how not to get run over by cars and trains. Some families live in fear, not letting their kids eat wild berries, not letting them cross the street by themselves, driving them everywhere and never letting them learn the landscape.

It's definitely difficult as a parent to let kids learn some things the hard way. But back to reading and writing, books can teach all of us some of these lessons without having to experience certain difficulties ourselves. Children's books are full of incidents and resolutions to problems, and really are educational, so long as we get them to read some of the more realistic stories (Bobbsey Twins, Swallows and Amazons) along with the magical fantasies (Harry Potter, etc.).

Finally, if we look at another meaning of "something that moves", that is a goal for writing compelling scenes. The "moving quality" might be emotional for some people and physical for others, or a combination. Probably what makes a writer like Nicholas Sparks so popular is that he combines both the anima and the animus in the action, appealing to both men and women. 

So, go ahead and write about something that moves.

Jennifer Getsinger
June 10, 2014

Rebecca Solnit on Mansplaining

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/20/men_explain_things_to_me_the_author_behind_mansplaining_on_the_origin_of_her_famous_coinage/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/06/mansplaining-explained-expert-women
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/06/04/men_explain_things_to_me_by_rebecca_solnit_review.html
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/

Enjoy the full moon and full summer.
Jennifer Getsinger
June 13, 2014

Officers as Heroes

It was very sad this week hearing about the RCMP officers who died in service. 
Some TV shows with officers as romantic heroes, such as Bones, show FBI officers.
The last thing I wanted to write was another cop story. However, sometimes a character appears...

I'm trying to write a romance in which a young airport officer (US Customs and Border Patrol) meets a gal from Colorado, and then he trains to be a different kind of officer who works with the county sheriff but on a federal level in an area of mixed jurisdictions in the Rocky Mountains (national park, native reservation, active mining areas, etc). One imagines a US Deputy Marshal like Wyatt Earp or an FBI officer like Booth. It's terribly complicated in real life, however, and the research leaves a lot of questions, some of which affect whether the plot I've imagined could actually work out in terms of law enforcement regulations.

Does anybody know anything about that?

If you are writing about US federal officers or other law enforcement, here is a link to some recent laws about whether or not off-duty officers can carry weapons:

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/january2011/off_duty_firearms

I came across it while trying to figure out what kind of dress suit an officer would wear off-duty :).

Of course I have been reading Tony Hillerman for background, as well as other western writers. I never imagined that this one character would be so complicated, starting out as just a good-looking, clean-cut kid in an airport job.
The young RCMP dog handler who was killed on duty last week reminded me of this guy I'm trying to write about: young, handsome, nice, with a faithful dog and a beautiful gal.

So what I'm doing is some writing, some research, some adjustments, and then of course when it's all done I'll probably have to make major revisions in the plot to accommodate some realities of officers and law enforcement. Where all else fails I'll fall back on the "it's fiction" excuse, but one still requires a certain amount of verisimilitude (no orange trees ripening in winter in high altitude Colorado, for instance).

Anyone has any other research resources, let me know. Like a book called "Modern US officer research for romance writers". I'm afraid if I start asking any real US federal officers too many questions they'll target me as a terrorist!

After this week I'm taking a couple of weeks off unless I feel moved to contribute the odd comment or two during my holiday. 

Jennifer Getsinger
June 12, 2014

The Ants Come Marching In

Life is predictable, more or less. Some inevitabilities come only once to humans, like birth and death, and some come yearly, like taxes. We seem to like predictability, knowing that the days grow longer and warmer in summer, for instance. The apples develop on the trees, and then some of them fall off in the June apple drop. On the first day of school in September, they are ready to eat or to present to the teacher. Another predictable visit from nature around here is the advent of the little ants. 

Today the little ants have finally arrived at my doorstep, about 10 days late this year. In 2011 and 2013 at least, they arrived on June 1 (I keep a garden book: the "cottonwood snow" is early this year; sea temperature is warmer; the Kalmia blossomed earlier; a particular azalea bloomed later than usual). Each time of year is accompanied by several more or less predictable nature happenings. Rhubarb crisp is followed by strawberry shortcake; blackberry jam is followed by blueberry pie.

Charlotte the spider weaves her web; in the fall she leaves an egg sac; in the spring the baby orb spiders float out to their new locations (this happened the other day) on the same breezes that distribute the cottonwood snow, carrying their seed to every crack and cranny where seedlings might develop.

However, humans who like a clean kitchen are not thrilled with ants. The first thing to remember is that they are temporary. The second thing is that they are not nuclear weapons, but very tiny insects (these are not the big, stinging fire ants, or nasty termites, but tiny little things about the size of the letter i in your email). Although there are a lot of them, they all behave similarly and can be managed for the short time they are visiting. The good thing about zillions of ants is that they feed the lovely birds such as the red-shafted flickers (so common around here!) Ants farm aphids. Lady beetles eat aphids. I know from several years of not using chemical weapons against ants outside that the apple trees still produce enough apples even though the ants and aphids tend to congregate on the leaf tips.

However, back to the kitchen door. Predictability of ants: they like to walk in the door in the same place every year. Predictability of humans: I like to minimize the problem by setting out "offerings", otherwise known as ant traps. Ants, like most animals, love food, especially sweet stuff. Ants, like most life forms, do not like an over-abundnce of dry desert minerals concentrated in sodium or with basic pH: for instance, salt (NaCl), baking soda (NaHCO3), or sodium tetraborate (Na2B4O7.10H2O), otherwise known as "borax". 

So if you want to "control" how many ants come into your house, trick them into eating something sweet mixed with something sodic. I use a teaspoon of jam mixed with a teaspoon of borax placed on a canning jar lid, a tin can lid, or a clamshell (easily composted when full of dead ants). Put it by the door, right in the path of the marching ants. The ants approach and eat. Then they drop dead or blunder off. It slows down the marching line of ants considerably. If you don't have any jam, use powdered or granulated sugar, plus borax. Or try sugar plus baking soda.

Likewise, if you are an open-water swimmer, red algae bloom at this time of year in English Bay. Another predictable nature thing not to freak out about. Brown crud gets all over you while swimming. Big deal. Wash it off. In a week or two the water clears up again. Brown algae in June usually signifies that the water is warm enough to swim in!

Have a nice summer! 

Jennifer Getsinger
June 11, 2014