See Ireland for Your Self & Soul: 16 How-to’s & Whys from CozyBookBasics

Cozy

• Stay for a week in a rural thatched-roof cottage near crystal-full Waterford, where Vikings set foot
• Watch the Irish Sea fishermen toiling to catch seafood to replenish what you’re eating for lunch in the port
• Imagine the impish fairies hiding outside your back door are coating the postcards you’re sending home with magical whimsy
• Breathe in the smell of the wild flowers, the bog, and the pervasive, mystifying mist

Book

• Take a copy of your family memoir, A Book of Kells, to the Mayor of Kells. Have faith that  “A book always finds its own readers”
• Look at stone ruins, graves and gates adorned with Celtic art, and the refuge to which monks fled from a bloody Viking raid to pen what’s now known as The Book of Kells
• Deposit a copy of your book for reference at Trinity College Library, Dublin, resting place of the original manuscript
• Hope that, along with an explanatory letter, your book will be cataloged as a legitimate addition to the long and quaint path of Kells memorabilia

Basic

• Search out Ireland’s soul. Pick up a rental car at  Dublin Airport early Saturday and count on luck to survive driving on the left side into the city. Stop at a central café to ‘people watch’; read the daily paper to get a handle on the pulse of the times and the place
• After walking around and sightseeing, have a beer at the James Joyce pub. Try to grasp what he was up to with writing Ulysses, The Dubliners and Finnegan’s Wake
• Attend a music-only sung service at Christ Church on Sunday morning or afternoon. This Celtic church was erected in the 11th century; the choir dates back 400 years.
• Spend a day motoring out to the Ring of Kerry on the south coast to see magnificent scenery.

Irish

• Indulge the Irish genes in you by telling local people your great-grandparents were poor tenant farmers in Armagh County who emigrated to America in the mid 19th century to find a better existence
• Go to a concert of Irish dancing in the spirit of your grandmother who expected everybody to ‘step around’ faster to do the work of the farm
• Be careful whom you tell your grandparents’ name was Campbell; old clan warfare hatreds still run deep
• Spend what you can on souvenirs, such as linen and lace, and take all the pictures you can to keep your visit alive and help the Irish economy

This  blog complicates the  mystery of why anyone would write a family memoir entitled  A Book of Kells, Growing Up in an Ego Void.

Margaret Kell Virany   lang & lit lover, Norrie Frye note-taker, journalist, writer, cook  http://www.cozybookbasics.com http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany

How to Build a Canoe the Aboriginal Way: 8 Steps & Pix

Step 1: Make the stems for the bow and stern, cutting them lengthwise to make it possible to bend them.

Step 2: Make hull out of  two 4″ x 8′ sheets of 1/8″ marine plywood, cut them and glue them along a somewhat diagonal lap joint, attach stems and make gunwales Two very young daughters can steady it all.

Step 3: Add seats and one rib in the middle to shape the gunwales and fix the cross section. Slit ‘darts’ along the top of the hull and drill holes, then lace the hull to the gunwales and pull the hull in.

Step 4: Fit the ‘darts’, abut them, and sew them closed with nylon string.

Step 5: Seal the darts and holes with fiberglass and polyester.

Step 6: Cover sewn canoe with fiberglass on the outside. Add thwarts, drill and lace seats.

Step 7: Add a ‘cap’ on top of the inside and outside gunwales. Fasten it with wooden pegs driven into drilled holes.

Step 8: Get your son to try the canoe.

The campus love story and need for a down payment that preceded this project are written up in last week’s blog.

Margaret Kell Virany   lang & lit lover, Norrie Frye notetaker, journalist, writer, cook  http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany  http://www.cozybookbasics.wordpress.com  http://www.margaretvirany.com

How We Fell in Love, Built a Canoe and Got a House

Tom in his home-made canoe

The Canoe 

As a 1950′s U of Toronto student  my attitude to monogamy was that if I was going to spend my whole life with one man he’d better not be boring. So when I spied a guy from Skule (the illiterate Engineering School on campus) sitting in the Varsity (student newspaper) office using a slide rule to choose type for headlines, I thought he might do. Further research revealed he spoke English with no accent although fresh off the boat from an exotic country, played the violin and skied slalom. In a chance encounter his dark eyes almost sent me reeling backwards down the steep, narrow staircase to where we put the paper to bed. I was ‘night editor’ and he was ‘in charge’.

Fifteen years, seven moves, three kids and multiple garden-home neighborhood squabbles later, we wanted our own house. Moonlighting by freelancing was the only practical answer and that’s why he built a canoe.

Down Payment on the American Dream of Owning a Home
Tom was inspired by curator John Landen  at the Centennial Museum in Owen Sound who built birch bark canoes like his Algonquin ancestors had, and by the book Bark Canoes & Skin Boats of North America. He aimed to figure out how to make a canoe out of modern materials but traditional methods without sacrificing the original swiftness and beauty.
He drew up the plans and, with friends who also wanted to have canoes, created five lightweight, curvaceous craft out of thin plywood and fiberglass. His method was to cut ‘darts’ and ‘sew’ them to provide the shape, not with spruce vines for lacing as the aboriginals did but with nylon string. Popular Mechanics bought the story and pictures for $600, the first money we could put aside towards a down payment of $3000 on our dream home. We purchased it a few years later and still live in it.

This  story and more are written up in A Book of Kells, Growing Up in an Ego Void. Stay tuned for my next blog with lots of images and explanations of how the canoe was built.

Margaret Kell Virany   lang & lit lover, Norrie Frye note-taker, journalist, writer, cook  http://www.cozybookbasics.wordpress.com

Do You Keep Mementos? Collecting Paper Napkins — a Memoir Writer’s Joyful Hobby

This St. Patrick’s paper napkin from a package my mother bought in 1942 started me on a collection which is a very satisfying hobby.

As a child:

• In the northern Ontario town of Cochrane (pop. 3,000) I was the preacher’s kid who collected paper napkins (called serviettes in Canada.)
• My mother’s friends and the neighbors on our street saw me coming and invited me in for a cookie while they rummaged through their buffets to see what they could find.
• My father, when he traveled out of town, did not have to worry or spend money on a token to bring home. He just had to stuff his napkin in his pocket to thrill this little girl.
•  Solitary hours spent counting, categorizing, analyzing, distinguishing and admiring the many geometric patterns and drawings of nature, weddings and  seasonal celebrations brought me joy.
• My world vision expanded: Japanese napkins were made of rice paper; transparent layers of luminous, floating, pastel floral designs clung together to make them absorbent. British serviettes, if they had them, were stiff and hand painted. The United States had drive-in restaurants.
• Signs of the times resonated, with British flags and Churchillian bulldogs to support the war effort.
• Gossipy secrets spilled out: I never would have suspected that Mr. and Mrs. X played golf, went to girly bars and drank cocktails when they were in Florida, far away from wintry Cochrane and my father’s sermons.

As an author, mother and grandmother

• My collection of paper napkins helped me recall the emotions and events of my youth when I wrote our family’s memoir
• Writing names and dates of occasions such as “my high school graduation party, 1950″ on the back destroyed the beauty of the serviette but preserved and stimulated more priceless memories
• An easel with a collage of vintage wedding and floral paper serviettes under plastic was mounted in our garden for our daughter’s wedding reception and admired by the guests
• The 500 serviettes still are in good shape, in spite of much handling. A selection was exhibited at the local library at Thanksgiving time.
• As a living, growing hobby, I hope it passes along to someone with the receptive genes.

Thank you for spending some of your time reading this post. Please browse around from tip to toe and, if you like, write a comment.

http://www.cozybookbasics.wordpress.com  http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany   http://www.amazon.co.uk   http://www.amazon.ca   http://www.margaretvirany.com

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Have a Dandy #St. Patrick’s Day, All Jigs & Swirls: Keeping Up with the Apps of The Book of Kells

folio 124r (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Book of Kells has exploded onto the digital stage and is challenging St. Patrick as an Irish icon.The St. Patrick’s Day  website of Trinity College, the University of Dublin, announces that everyone may now experience the Book of Kells online, for free, in its new Digital Collections. http://www.tcd.ie/Library/bookofkells/

• The Book of Kells for Ipad, released in December, 2012 is a top seller in Apple stores. For $12.99 you can buy a copy of the priceless manuscript. iPad app of the Book of Kells,

• A team of computer scientists and art historians is preserving, analyzing and quantifying the designs to make them public as a database for artwork applications. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrqo8DXHw8o

Early History  After St. Patrick established the first Christian mission in Ireland in the fifth century, Irish monasteries spread their spiritual and cultural influence far and wide.

• Celtic monks living on the Isle of Iona created a 680-page manuscript of the Four Gospels (Latin Vulgate version) early in the ninth century. At the same time, it codified their entire civilization.
• The sacred Word of God had a gold cover and was designed to sit on the altar at the high holidays of the Christian year.
• Vikings raided and savaged the monks’ colony; the surviving monks fled to Kells, county Meath in Ireland.
• Thieves stole the book, ripped off its cover and buried it in a bog 1,000 years ago.
• When found months later, the Annals of Ulster called it “the greatest relic of western civilization”.  No one challenges that description today.
• The Roman Catholic Church took it for safekeeping in the 16^th century, then brought it to Dublin 100 years later.

The Art  Four extremely talented artists, one of them from the Mediterranean, worked together with 50 or so assistants, researchers believe.

• The monks wrote on vellum prepared from the slaughter of 185 calves and used ten vibrant pigments, some from distant lands. A purple-brown-black ink was made from iron salts and local vegetable sources, such as oak apples (galls).
• Mind-boggling in complexity and ornamentation, the book combines figures of humans, animals and mythical beasts with Celtic knot-work and interlace. Motifs swirl, letters evolve into pictures and pictures into letters.
• Along with technical know-how and Christian iconography, the monks had fun. A letter M is two monks pulling each other’s beards; an  illustrated rhyme compares a writer choosing words to his cat chasing mice.
• The lavish, intricate, minute, illuminated art and calligraphy overwhelm even the Holy Script.

Update  Since the mid 1800’s, the book has been on display, now bound into four volumes of 33×25-cm pages. It has some water damage, is extremely fragile and has lost substantial pigment. The folios bend or contract if the temperature changes the least bit, threatening adhesion of the colors.

• In 1989 Facsimile-Verlag Lucern published a limited edition of 1480 copies (740 reserved for the British Isles). Two copies, valued at $18,000 each, were presented to Texas Christian University and Austin College in 1990.
• In March 2012, 120 people came to a lecture on the Book of Kells at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, VT. At the University of Dublin, Professor Roger Stalley debunked the idea that the book was created in quiet seclusion.
• Simon Worrall published The Book of Kells: Copulating Cats and Holy Men, a highly entertaining, informative, short book, in 2012.

Have you been to Ireland and seen The Book of Kells?

Would you tell us about it?

Thank you for spending some of your time reading this post. Please browse around from tip to toe and, if you like, write a comment.

http://www.cozybookbasics.wordpress.com  http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany   http://www.amazon.co.uk   http://www.amazon.ca   http://www.margaretvirany.com

Meet Our Mother, Susanna Annesley Wesley: “Obedience Is the Basis of All Other Virtues”

Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of John Wesley, was a role model for generations of British woman

A surprise comment from some women who read my family memoir  is, “Margaret!   We had the same mother!” What we seem to have in common is not the same DNA, but the same British tradition. They wonder why their mother never talked about herself, and never talked to them about their selves. “What were our mothers thinking?” they ask.

Susanna Annesley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanna_Wesley was so conscientious (a trait of the mothers we’re talking about) she set down her ideas about child raising so she could be a good example for all women.

This excerpt from A Book of Kells: Growing Up in an Ego Void http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00440DQNA flashes back to 1955:

“In my senior year, I was elected president of Annesley Hall, the girls’ residence a.k.a. the Bastion of Virginity. This home to sixty Vic
co-eds was named after John Wesley’s mother, Susanna Annesley, who set the Methodist pattern for raising children. She considered obedience the basis for all other virtues, since children must learn from their parents until old enough to form their own judgments. They must clean up their plates, speak softly to the servants and be honest, knowing that forgiveness was at hand. She taught her eight children the alphabet on their fifth birthdays, although two of the girls took one-and-one-half days to master it. They learned to pray and read the Bible, and each evening she spent an hour with one child alone. She paid particular attention to John, God’s special child who had been saved from a fire in the rectory at the age of six. He grew up to be called ‘the most influential Englishman since Shakespeare.’”

It was not a warm relationship between the egos of mother and child but a strict training in obedience, humility, appreciation, honesty, redemption, literacy, Biblical mythology and worth. My mother lived from 1900 to 1990 and was still dedicated enough to the Methodist pattern to try to instill these virtues in my sisters and me. Deeply affected by the trauma of  world war one, she particularly emphasized security, passing on a  sense of complete trust in God.

I had to spend six years doing research before I could understand her, celebrate our love and take real joy in having had her as my mother.

What do  you think? Is this child-raising pattern horrendous or sound? Too cold, strict and harsh?

John Wesley wrote, “My mother was the source from which I derived the guiding principles of my life”. Yet perhaps he might envy his contemporary, Benjamin West, who said, “A kiss from my mother made me a painter”.

Thank you for spending some of your time reading this post. Please browse around and, if you like, write some comments.

http://www.cozybookbasics.wordpress.com,  www.margaretvirany.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany, http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.amazon.ca

How Not to Cocoon in a Snowed-in Nest — Even if Old & Cold

The view out towards Athol Doune Dr. in Aylmer, Quebec, Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

24-hour strategy for ducking in and out of a snowed-in nest

1. We were invited to a free rehearsal of Mozart’s Requiem last night, as new donors to the National Arts Centre. Orchestra Conductor Pinchas Zuckerman led the musicians right through the performance without stopping. Then he went back over the bars that needed perfecting. From the best seats in the house, we saw the orchestra members dressed like ordinary guys — picture the bass soloist booming away magnificently from underneath his baseball cap.
2. Heavy snow won’t stop falling. We are ‘plugged’ in because the ‘snort’ doesn’t stop when it plows past our shoveled-out driveway. Words in single quotes are my husband’s jokes. (We’re funny here in Aylmer.)
3. Stand Up is the name of a program of the health services department of the Province of Quebec’s government. Aging people often are badly hurt or lose their independence as the result of a fall. We did exercises for balance, stretching, flexibility (particularly of the toes, feet and ankles) and strength. Outsiders think Quebec ignores the English but this program is in our language. The old monastery at the foot of our street has been changed into a beautiful senior’s residence and that’s where we gathered. Out of 18 taking part, my husband was the only  man. The others in town must be “too big to fall.”
4. Dinner to-night will be vegetarian chili. You can make this easily if  you have time to cut up and sauté onions, garlic, celery, a pound of mushrooms, green and red peppers. Add red kidney beans, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce and chilli powder and just let it snow — er, stew. It’s a healthy heart recipe.
5. We wish you happy hours and we invite you to stay awhile with us around our ‘foyer’ (wood stove inside the front door).

Thank you for spending some of your time reading this post. Please browse around and, if you like, write some comments.

http://www.cozybookbasics.wordpress.com,  www.margaretvirany.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany, http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.amazon.ca

Timely Tips from Pinocchio & Ben Franklin: No More Bad Boys; No More Bribes

Disney – Pinocchio! (Photo credit: Express Monorail)

An odd pair of free e-books arrived on my Kindle reader: The Adventures of Pinocchio and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. You don’t have time to read them, so I did — because they have tips for today’s bad news:

• Pinocchio was written in 1883 by the Italian lampoonist Carlo Lorenzini (pen name Collodi) to show how to turn naughty boys into real men— not, Heaven forbid, gun-toting assassins like we have in Chicago.
• Millions of children safely in their beds can follow every reckless whim, foolish impulse and evil rogue in 36 brilliantly written chapters and 32 fabulous line drawings. They are mistreated and cheated, suffer traumatic horrors, are hanged from a tree, are fried in a pan, play in the Land of the Boobies, are turned into a donkey and swallowed by a monstrous dogfish.
• Then comes the resolution, a happy ending, a tuck-in, a prayer, a hug and a kiss.
• Due to his good heart, the Blue Fairy, his love for Geppetto and his own resolve, Pinocchio manages to turn everything around and become the son and hero his ailing father dreamed of  having.

As FLOTUS and POTUS said when they got into the White House,  “Read to your children” and “Be good fathers.” What good advice for adults in their hometown of Chicago and everywhere else!

Benjamin Franklin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In colonial Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin was the go-to congressman  to work out  deals diplomatically.  He had just two years of schooling but had read John Bunyan‘s Pilgrim’s Progress, drawn up his own list of 15 virtues and rated himself on them daily. This was his personal declaration of independence. He avoided distractions and had no time to listen to preachers.

The British offered to send in their army to defend the colonists in the upcoming war against France in 1754. The Americans agreed to pay a tax to finance it. The British thought their rich owners of American estates (proprietaries) should be excused. Franklin was on alert!

• The British bonded their deputies to support their bill and offered bribes to American congressmen. Franklin replied, ” My circumstances, thanks to God, are such as to make proprietary favors unnecessary to me.”
• The congress rejected the bill, with Franklin deeming it ” incredible meanness”, “an injustice to the people” and “a manacling of the rights of the public”.
• The congress drafted their own bill but the governor changed one word, so that “not exempting the proprietaries” read as “only exempting the proprietaries”.
• Congress rebuffed it, the British asked the king to deny royal assent; then the colonists petitioned the king. The issue was referred to the attorney and solicitor general and stalled.
• Franklin went to England to talk to the proprietaries and their private friends but failed to persuade them. The crux of the problem was they thought they were “in odium” (widespread dislike) to the people. Left to their mercy in proportioning the taxes they would inevitably be ruined.
• A shrewd British deputy advised Franklin to give the British a written guarantee this wouldn’t happen. He wrote a clause which passed unanimously and the governor, who was later replaced because of this action, let it go through.
• Meanwhile, farmers and other citizens supplying the war effort were not paid and Franklin pointed out to the British their rising discontent. A compromise was proposed that they would pay a grant in lieu of taxes and congress accepted it.
• This solution lasted for about 20 years, until the Stamp Act came up.

Does America have a hero who will try to stave off another revolution? It may depend on what books he reads and whether he takes them to heart.

Thank you for spending some of your valuable time reading this post. Please browse around and, if you like, write some comments.

http://www.cozybookbasics.wordpress.com,  www.margaretvirany.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany, http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.amazon.ca

My First Blogger Birthday

Margaret Kell Virany  lover of language and literature, note-taker of Northrop Frye, journalist, editor, author, blogger, cook

Books: Kathleen’s Cariole Ride, a war bride’s answer to a call of love in the wilderness; A Book of Kells: Growing Up in an Ego Void, a 20th century Canadian memoir (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00440DQNA); and Eating at Church, 175 traditional communal recipes

http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany, http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.amazon.ca

A year ago yesterday I posted my first blog on WordPress — or anywhere. That was the time The Hunger Games sold more than a million digital copies online and I learned the word dystopia in the process of writing a review. Two girls from Denmark commented on it. When I cut and pasted it into a Tweet, my niece was shocked to see her elderly aunt’s mug shot opposite “Does Eating Children Make for Good Literature?”
I was exuberant then because I was on an adventure and that hasn’t changed. Now I’ve gone overboard on the dashboard in the top left corner of the ‘edit post’ page. I can”t believe it took me a year to discover  it. For two days I gobbled up Freshly Pressed Friday Faves, clicking on colleagues who are more tangible here and — best of all — examining my recent output in figures and lists, all perfectly organized. Some of this information, I admit, I’ve  scoured Support and the Forum to find. Poor WordPress, I hope you’ve got mostly smarter bloggers (but none happier.)
It took me some time to appreciate the Profile page, and the ease of putting up a background on it. One red-letter day I discovered the editing service wasn’t a nuisance but a very helpful tutor, and Zemanta had a photo for my every need.
I’ve connected my blog to Google+ and from there my posts go to Twitter. Best shortcut of all is that I can start each day by going into my gmail. From it I can click into Google+ and from there to Twitter and WordPress. When I first started I spent hours cutting, pasting and trying to get into different sites with different passwords. Now I have one station.
Today I celebrate an experience I truly enjoy. There’s much to look forward to and learn — but perhaps I’m too easily satisfied and I’d like to know how other people are doing. What about  you? How long have you been blogging and how is it going? If we brag and complain together, we’ll all get some good tips.

Thanks WordPress and thanks fellow bloggers. See you scrolling around!

Thank you for spending some of your time reading this post. Please browse around and, if you like, write some comments.

Come Along on Kathleen’s Cariole Ride as a Valentine’s Treat So Sweet

A tiny 2-inch pop-up Valentine, circa 1920 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Come along with Kathleen on her cariole ride as a Valentine’s treat

Because her story is so sweet.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006NFSYV8

Margaret Kell Virany   lover of language and literature, note-taker of Northrop Frye, journalist, editor, author, blogger, cook

Books: Kathleen’s Cariole Ride, a war bride’s answer to a call of love in the wilderness; A Book of Kells: Growing Up in an Ego Void, a 20th century Canadian memoir (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00440DQNA); and Eating at Church, 175 traditional communal recipes

Thank you for spending some of your time reading this post. Please browse around and, if you like, write some comments.

http://www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany, http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.amazon.ca