You CAN make a difference in a developing country

Hand Up

Loans that change Lives

Over the past few years I have had the opportunity to travel in India, Guatemala and Uganda. Seeing the poverty in these countries, especially in India where tourists are often swarmed by children and adults begging for money, food… anything, is agonizing. It’s hard to know what to do, it’s impossible to help everyone, and you come away feeling  helpless and uncomfortable about all that we take for granted back home. I have sponsored children, helped build schools in developing countries and have given money to various charities knowing that every little bit helps, but more recently I came across Kiva, an organization that uses your money to finance loans to individuals in developing countries. These loans help entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground. Sometimes it’s farming, sometimes it’s retail or even maintenance for cars and buildings. These loans are repaid, bit by bit, and you can simply reinvest the money into another individual’s business. Continue reading →

The End

The EndToday I typed The End.

I’ve been working on this novel for at least two years. Probably longer.
I should feel elated, but I feel strangely empty instead.
For one thing, I don’t really know if it is The End. I’ll have to reread the story (again!) to see if it has come full circle. Have I reached the place I was aiming for since page one? I don’t know. Is that because I’ve been with this story for so long that I’ve lost perspective? Perhaps.

Or perhaps I feel sad at the prospect of saying goodbye to these characters, who aren’t actually characters to me. They are real people. After all, I have been living with them for a couple of years now. It’s hard to leave old friends, people you’ve been with every day, wrestling with them, finding their flaws, discovering their strengths, observing their growth.

I recently heard a writer friend use the term Premature Submission. It refers to the temptation to send the manuscript to the publisher too soon, before it’s been put aside for a few weeks and then looked at with fresh eyes. This is an important step in the writing process. Problems with a story become much clearer when the writer has stepped away from it for a while. One can hope that the story will begin to age like fine wine, but more likely the writer will see the rough edges, the clutter, themes that are incomplete, connections that weren’t made.

This isn’t really The End at all. It is the beginning of a whole new stage in the writing process.

Thirteen years and counting…

Sir Winston

Sir Winston

Friend A:  “My dog is 13 and I’m so sad because I know he is nearing the end of his life.”

Friend B:  “Are you kidding me? My dog died when she was only 9! You’re lucky that you’ve had so much more time with your dog.”

It’s all in the perspective. Dogs have short life spans. We know that when we invite them into our families.

My old boy is really showing his age this summer. He doesn’t hear a thing, not even the front door banging shut when I return home.  Jumping into the car to go to the trails for long hikes is a thing of the past. The hot weather exhausts him. He pants a lot. He sleeps deeply. But he loves us as fiercely as ever. His tail wags madly in greeting even when he’s too tired to lift his head off the floor, and he still finds the energy to bark hysterically at squirrels in the yard – there’s hardly anything left of the windowsills which his claws have gouged during these frantic episodes.

I’m grateful for 13 really good years together and hope we can squeeze out a couple more.

Calf-roping is not okay

calf roping posterMy theme for the past couple of posts has been ‘kindness’.  This applies to animals as well as humans. I cannot fathom how we can be so cruel to animals, how we can call calf-roping a ‘sport’, how we can inflict pain and fear onto helpless animals. Calf-roping is just one example, of course, but because it’s rodeo season it’s the one that we’re hearing about. When people attend these events they are showing their support to this cruel practise, which is  as unfeeling as actually doing the roping.

calf roping

Does this calf look like he’s having fun?

Can we call it ‘sport’ when the calves don’t stand a chance in the competition?

More thoughts on kindness

candle“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” (Buddha)

“So spread your light through love and kindness to the people around you and let the ‘giving spirit’ you initiate spread like a virus, infinitely touching the lives of people you may never meet, across boundaries you may never cross, in ways you may never have thought possible. That is the power of our love and kindness, and it’s your ticket to making the world a happier place.” (author unknown)

I remember the day a total stranger pulled over to the side of a busy and narrow highway to help me change a flat tire. It was dangerous work with huge trucks barreling past, threatening to drag us along in their undertow. I asked for the stranger’s name, wanted to buy him lunch, something, but he simply asked me to do a good deed for someone else. I was  touched by his kindness. I do try to practise kindness in my life, but need to make a greater effort to practise random acts of kindness for strangers each and every day. It may not be a  something big, like changing a tire, some days it may only be a sincere compliment, but who knows where it may lead? Hopefully the gesture will ‘spread like a virus.’

Kindness

KindnessKindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. ~Samuel Johnson

 

It’s easy to be kind to people we love or even people we want to impress. It’s much harder to be kind to that bumbling waiter, cranky cashier or rude taxi driver. A truly kind person is the one who shows kindness to the person they will never see again, for they are not being kind with the expectation of getting something in return. We remember small acts of kindness shown to us by strangers. These are the acts of kindness that will start the ripple that will really change the world.

 

 

 

Weaving Fact With Fiction

Prodigal Summer I’m always inspired by the way Barbara Kingsolver weaves scientific facts into her novels without bogging down the story. A less skilled writer would risk sounding heavy-handed or preachy but she does it masterfully. When I finish reading one of her books I always feel I’ve learned something without having had to slog through a science journal. It probably helps that we share some of the same passions, but still…

The environment and all its creatures are featured in Kingsolver’s novel Prodigal Summer which I’m currently reading. This conversation between a woman and a child explains, very simply, the devastation of clear-cutting a forest.

“You could cut down all these trees and make a pile of money.”
“I could,” Lusa said. “Then I’d have a pile of money and no trees.”
“So? Who needs trees?”
“About nineteen million bugs, for starters. They live in the leaves, under the bark, everywhere. Just close your eyes and point, and you’re pointing at a bug.”
“So? Who needs nineteen million bugs?”
“Nineteen thousand birds that eat them.”
“So? Who needs birds?”
“I do. You do…… not to mention, the rain would run straight down the mountain and take all the topsoil off my fields. The creek would be pure mud. This place would be a dead place.”
Crys shrugged. “Trees grow back.”
“That’s what you think. This forest took hundreds of years to get like this.”
“Like what?”
“Just how it is, a whole complicated thing with parts that all need each other, like a living body. It’s not just trees; it’s different kinds of trees, all different sizes, in the right proportions. Every animal needs its own special plant to live on. And certain plants will only grow next to certain other kinds, did you know that?” Continue reading →

The best thing about being an author….

… is hearing from my readers!grateful

I keep every letter/email I receive from people who have read my books and when the writing gets tough and I want to give up I simply read through these letters to get the encouragement to carry on. Thank you to every one of you who has taken the time to write and tell me what my books meant to you. You have no idea how much I appreciate your kind words.

Here’s one from this week, about my book Dancing Naked which is one of my older titles.

“Thank you so much for your gorgeous novel “Dancing Naked” and giving me the chance to share Kia’s and Justin’s respective journeys. Honestly, I had many time when I felt desperate to give each of them a hug according to the struggles they were working through…

No idea if I will ever have enough anything to strip and dance as suggested by your story’s title but it has definitely helped me make some steps toward journeying through life and I’m insanely grateful for the effect it’s had on my life, showing me I’m not alone and giving me ideas about where I can turn for a spiritual home.”

Insanely grateful? That warms my heart. And another one, from a few weeks ago.

“I just finished dancing naked it is one of my favourite books now! I don’t like to read but that book just made me want to read more and more. I never wanted to stop. It stood out for me a lot and I am looking forward to reading more of our books!

Thank you, dear readers, for your notes of encouragement. I am “insanely grateful” to each of you!

Bears (Disneynature)

Bears, DisneynatureThe movie, Bears, by Disneynature is breathtakingly beautiful. While the credits roll at the end the audience is given a glimpse into the inside work of the film-makers, how they captured those amazing close-up scenes of bears fighting, playing, fishing. They even showed the mother bear in her hibernation den nursing her newborn cubs! But it was just a tease. I would like to have been a seagull for a day (or a year) so I could really see how it was done. That would be a movie in itself.

What I especially like about  Bears is that it does not preach. The message of doom and gloom and how humans are destroying the planet is not there. It simply shows a year in the life of a female bear with her two cubs, and what they need to do to survive. The setting is the unspoiled (by humans) wilderness of the artic. The narration has many comical moments but also ties all the visual scenes together. The backdrop scenery is stunning. The viewer comes away with renewed respect for this magnificent creature, the bear. Hopefully, this alone will empower the  viewer, young and old, to take action to preserve the bear’s habitat.

Spectacular, educational and the two cubs are unbelievably cute. A must see for all wildlife lovers.