Author Archives: lydias

Tom Thomson was a famous Canadian painter who died nearly a century ago. His landscapes influenced the Group of Seven. Had he lived longer, there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have become an official member and they would have been called the Group of Eight instead.

If you haven’t heard of this artist or the kinds of paintings he and his friends became famous for, the links above will tell you all about them.

What I want to talk about today, though, is why you should be following Tom Thomson on Twitter. He also has a blog, although he is much more active on Twitter.

His paintings are beautiful in an understated way. My favourite one from him is included below, although there is something I like about every piece of art I’ve seen from him. They remind me of what it feels like to stand outside on a freezing January morning, or a breezy May afternoon, or a hot and muggy August evening and feel everything that nature has in store for me on that particular day. The weather can’t always be tied up into neat packages, and neither can Tom’s work.

There are many things we know about the ordinary fabric of this artist’s daily life. His recent tweets have discussed everything from what he ate for specific meals to how he liked to spend his free time to what sketches he was working on in the last few weeks and months before he died. More than once I’ve been impressed by his descriptions of the small details of his life. Yesterday he mentioned eating boiled potatoes and stew, for example. I barely remember what I ate for dinner last week, so have those details of someone’s life from a hundred years ago is surprising and fascinating.

In the months I’ve been getting to know him, Tom has been kind, funny, and personable. There are times when he seems unsure of himself or when he doesn’t know what he should do next. Yet he still picks himself up the next day and tries again. These are the tweets I’ve come to appreciate from him the most because of how much they reveal about his personality and character. He’s the type of person I’d invite out to dinner if we were living in the same century.

Exactly how he died is a matter of debate. We know he was alone at Canoe Lake and that his empty canoe surfaced days before anyone found his body in the water. Did he have some kind of medical emergency that lead to him falling into the lake and drowning? Did his canoe accidentally tip over or bump into something submerged in the water, leaving him to drown before he could be saved? Did he stumble across someone who was doing something illegal and who didn’t want any witnesses of their crime?

There are so many different possibilities. I’ve mulled over many of them as I read this painter’s latest tweets and wished there was a way to reach back through the decades and save him.

If only every piece of history could be this relatable and memorable.

Until that happens, you should be following Tom Thomson. I’d love to hear what you think of his paintings as well as what your theories are about how he died.

Here is this week’s list of tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

This Is the Best Way to Improve Every Part of Your Life. There’s a lot of truth to this.

How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion. When people lament the passing of the good old days, I wonder how much they actually know about daily life in whatever era they wish we could return to. This is something I think about a lot when I watch Call the Midwife. As fascinated as I am by the characters on it, I’d never want to live in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Life was simpler back then, but it was also incredibly difficult. Medical care was limited and a lot of people were trapped by strict social conventions that were only just beginning to loosen a little. All of these thoughts were tumbling around in my mind as I read this article. It’s a great one.

Mom Says: Catechism or Soccer, You Pick via 4AreaFrenchman. I absolutely love the mom’s response in this essay. It reminds me of how my parents raised their kids as well as how my brother and his wife are raising their family. Freedom is a very good thing.

Preventive Mastectomy: The First Week via PrairieHeels. Fair warning: this post includes some pictures of what the author’s body looked like as she was healing after surgery. What I liked the most about her story was how honest and positive she was. Too often people either seem to share horror stories about medical stuff or gloss over what it’s really like to recover from procedure X. If I was going to have this kind of surgery for some reason, I would have felt so reassured and comforted by her descriptions of how everything went. It was absolutely lovely.

The Difference Between Being Nice and Being Kind via Dan_Salerno_. This isn’t something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, but Dan’s definitions make sense.

From My Mother and Polio:

There’s a reason why I don’t get into arguments with anti-vaxxers.

My mother had polio when she was a young child, maybe a year older than Secondborn is now. Prior to that, she’d been a very active little girl — the fastest runner on her block, she once told me.

Then she came down with polio.

What have you been reading?

This is a short, science fiction film about a dry world. The creatures living on it survive by hunting clouds and extracting the water from it . One day their hunt doesn’t exactly go as planned.

There were several scenes that reminded me of old Warner Bros cartoons because of how comical they were. The characters’ facial expressions in them were absolutely perfect.

I wonder if people will still be watching stuff like this in 50 years? I hope so!

Don’t worry – we’re not ill or injured in any way. This post is based on a hypothetical conversation I had with my spouse over the weekend.

Imagine that you’ve just been hospitalized. Maybe you won a fight with a polar bear or you found out you were severely allergic to mushrooms the scary way. (I’ll leave it up to your brilliant imaginations to come up with more creative backstories for this scenario if you don’t like the ones I’ve suggested. Ha!)

Either way, you’re in the hospital now. You could be drugged up due to severe pain or recovering from surgery. You are definitely not feeling like your normal self at any rate.

A message appears on your cell phone asking which room you’re staying in. There are a few cars full of people who want to come up and visit. What would you say to them? Will you want to see everyone? Only a few people? No one at all? How do you decide who, if anyone, to invite up?

I’ve never been hospitalized, but I’ve recovered from enough injuries and illnesses at home to know that I wouldn’t want any visitors (other than my husband and possibly my parents) in that scenario. When things are going wrong with my body, I’m incredibly quiet and withdrawn. More than anything, I crave peace and quiet on those days. The last thing I’d want to do under those circumstances is to make small talk or be a cheerful host.

Yes, I know that no reasonable person would expect wittiness or a great hosting experience out of me. I’d still feel pressured to hide how much I was hurting, though, and that’s not a good or healthy thing. Some people heal best when they’re given a lot of privacy, and I’m one of them.

This has nothing to do with how much I love anyone else in my life.  My brain simply shuts down when I reach a certain level of discomfort. Socializing isn’t fun for me then. It’s incredibly draining. All I want to do is to sleep, watch Netflix, or read quietly while my body recovers. Depending on what’s bothering me – a throat problem that makes it hard to talk; an injury that reminds me it exists in agonizing ways every time someone accidentally jostles the bed or touches me the wrong way-  it could even be physically painful to entertain guests.

Due to this, I’d turn all of my surprise visitors away. The people I’d actually want to see would never show up that way to begin with. My recovery would be quiet, peaceful, and beautifully hidden.

How common is this reaction? Do other people find it soothing to have many guests when they’re very sick or in pain?

Google has answered a lot of offbeat questions for me over the years, but it hasn’t been able to tell me how most people react to this situation. This makes me even more curious to know what my readers think. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Here is this week’s list of poems, blog posts, short stories, and tidbits from my favourite corners of the web. The photo on the left has nothing to do with this week’s links. I’m sharing it because I think it’s cute and I’m so thrilled that spring has finally arrived in Ontario.

A Complete History of Beyoncé and Jay Z’s Relationship.  I find it utterly fascinating that someone actually took the time to compile such a long and detailed list of what sounds like every time this couple has mentioned each other in public. Putting that much energy into someone else’s private life isn’t something I understand. If any of my readers are into this sort of thing, I’d love to know why you find it so amusing. It would also be interesting to interview you if you’re willing to answer a few questions. I want to know how your mind works. Ha!

Raise Your Wands via JackieSmith114. This is for all of the Harry Potter fans who follow my blog.

4 Ways to Help Your Adopted/Foster Child Through Mother’s Day and Other Holidays via MarriageReset. My thoughts are with everyone who finds Mother’s Day hard for any reason. This is one of many reasons why some people struggle with this holiday.

3 Healthy Coping Strategies via teachaholicblog. It’s nice to hear how other people cope with bad days.

Opting Out of Coastal Madness to Live a Low-Overhead Life. If small towns were more accepting places, I’d consider this idea. It’s something I’d recommend to people who are heterosexual, cisgender, white, and religious, but once you start moving outside of those labels things can get pretty complicated. There are excellent reasons why certain minority groups tend to move to cities. I hope this will change one day soon because this article really does make some good points about adjusting your lifestyle to save money.

From 1957:

It was a bright day in May, and the clocks were striking twelve. I had no idea why I’d been summoned to the Head’s study. Dr. Treadwell had four clocks there, each a present from a grateful pupil. We heard the chapel clock everywhere in Dean House, deep and reverent, ordering the school day. Treadwell let each of his little clocks chime together on the hour, but Old Ned drowned them.

What have you been reading?

The high school I attended was small and rural, but it was large enough to have two options for students who wanted to study a second language. I chose Spanish over German without a moment of hesitation. It seemed far more useful given how many people there were in that area who spoke Spanish as their first language.

Getting to know our new teacher was exciting at first. She seemed to love the Spanish language, and she spent a lot of time showing us why she felt that way. We spent one class period picking out psuedonyms for ourselves from a long list that she’d given us. I chose Lucia because it was the closest approximation to Lydia I could find.

The cracks were whispers at first. There were rumours of our teacher having health problems, although no one knew exactly what was ailing her. One day she disappeared without warning. I thought it might be a temporary absence at first, but she never came back. As an adult, I completely understand why the school administration protected her privacy so completely. At the time, though, it felt like they were ignoring us and stonewalling all of our reasonable questions about what happened and why we weren’t learning anything anymore.

None of our substitutes spoke Spanish. Most of them were only around for a few days before the next one showed up, so everything ground to a halt as the months flew by. We studied the same sections over and over again. When we did move onto a new section, the temporary teachers didn’t know how to pronounce any of the words we’d already learned, much less the new and unfamiliar ones. Eventually a longterm substitute was found just before the year ran out, but she didn’t speak the language either.

We had a fluent teacher the next year. She was nice, but she didn’t seem to understand how fragmented and disorganized our first year of study had been. Her lessons sometimes included words and grammar rules that we had never been taught. This would have been totally fine if the lesson had been about showing us how to use them, but they often assumed we already knew all of that information. That made it difficult to understand what she was asking us to do.

More and more classmates dropped the class as the semesters rolled by. I stayed until the end of my Junior year, but I only ended up retaining a few words and phrases.

I’ve been studying Spanish lately, so these memories are coming back. It’s never too late to start again. Maybe this time I’ll actually learn how to read and write the language!

I wish this video would have been longer. It touched on so many different issues that humanity will face in the near future.

It will be interesting to see how we cope with them.

Silence can be a good thing. All is well with me, but I have nothing to say today.

I hope and plan to be back on Wednesday with something interesting.

In the meantime, enjoy your Monday.

Here is this week’s list of poems, essays, and tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

What Literacy Can Do for Children in Institutions:

But can we, in our developed world of medical and social care, begin to imagine their anguish when doctors advised them that the only way they could ensure the twins would be cared for and properly educated was to give them up to an institution for children designated “irecuperabil”(impossible to recuperate)?

Somewhere Between A-three and A-four via JAHesch. Like Joe, I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately. One of the towns I grew up in had a few different rivers that met in the middle of it. I used to love walking past them and seeing how high the water levels had risen when I went to the library. There were some times in the summer when so much water had evaporated that you could actually climb down onto the side of the riverbed and walk on dry ground beside the temporarily smaller stream.  I never actually did that, but it sure was tempting during the mugginess of July and August. This poem reminded me of those experiences.

Hobo Cat or Super Tramp? via catsstories. Posts like this make me wish that I wasn’t so allergic to  cats. They seem like they’d be great companions.

Bisexual Doesn’t Mean Polyamorous via Living_Queer. It amazes me that people are still so quick to assume that these terms are synonyms. While some people do identify as both, they’re two completely different identities.

A Positive Life: How a Son Survived Being Injected with HIV by His Father. This story brought tears to my eyes.

I Am Becky With the Good Hair.  I still wonder if the whole thing isn’t a publicity stunt, although the music itself on Lemonade is great.

What have you been reading?