I’m going to perform a magic trick today and give Internet access and knowledge of how to use it to the characters on this list who didn’t actually live in times and places where social media, much less the Internet itself, existed.
Why: Imagine all of the stories that a vampire who is commonly mistaken for a child could tell about her life as she met people from every walk of life on Facebook.
Why: Her life was filled with difficult twists and turns that were poetically described. I’d want her to share every detail she was comfortable sharing (and accept donations so she could flee to a better life). There is a lot of compassion online for people who are going through financial trouble and who have troubled family relationships. She could find a real sense of community on a place like Twitter or Instagram.
Why: She was by far the most interesting character in this book. Since it wasn’t written from her perspective, getting her to share small moments of her life on Snapchat would be a nice way to get to know her better. I’m sure she’d be filled with things to say about her childhood.
5. Elsa from Frozen (and Frozen 2, although I haven’t seen it yet)
Why: She’d be great at condensing her thoughts into bite-sized tweets on Twitter. I think that medium would suit her well, too, because of how easily it combines words and pictures together.
6. Hermione Granger
Why: Her LinkedIn profile would be legendary. She’d have so many accomplishments to share.
7. Santa Claus
Why: If he were on every social media platform, social media would be a much friendlier place in general.
The idea for this new series came from two places.
Terry Tyler’s year-long photo series on what her local park looks like in each month of the year.
And Marianne Arkins’ comment on a post I wrote last month in which she asked me to share more of my photography.
Once a month, I will share snapshots of one of the parks in Toronto so my readers can get a feel for what the climate is like then and what the foliage is (or isn’t) doing. I may share bonus photos of other parts of the city, too, once the weather warms up and I’m spending more time outdoors.
February used to be a colder and snowier month in Toronto than it is in this century. I didn’t grow up here, but the weather in my childhood home state of Ohio is similar enough for me to make the comparison between them.
Climate change has shifted those historical weather patterns. February now acts like March in this part of the world. By that I mean that it’s unpredictable and often stormy. One day you could have a blizzard and overnight lows of -20 C (-4 F) or colder. A day or two after that it could warm up to 10 C (50 F) and sunny.
My visit happened on a warm day when it was about 7 C (44 F) outside. The sun was shining, but there was still some snow on the ground.
The orange fence you see is the background is part of a city project to revitalize this park. It’s a heavily used area and the ground had been pretty trampled before city workers started to cordon off areas to let them rest.
A park monument covered in snow and ice.
All of the plants are dormant or dead at this time of the year. You can see a few straggling leaves from last autumn still holding on, but the trees’ branches are bare other than that.
Notice that you haven’t seen any people here yet. While I do my best to avoid taking photos of strangers, this isn’t a popular time of year for going to the park in general. I didn’t see anyone in the distance while I was there.
There is generally some snow on the ground in February. It melts on warm days, but we’ll probably continue to get more snowfall and to see patches of old snow hanging on in shady spots until April.
The photo above is of a muddy running trail that is flooded with half-melted ice and snow. Normally, it would have a flat, solid dirt surface.
One of the reasons why people don’t visit our parks as often, or at all, in February has to do with what the land is like now. The cycles of freezing and thawing creates less-than-ideal conditions in the park for many common activities like having a picnic, exercising, or otherwise straying from the sidewalk.
We get so much precipitation in Toronto that it’s hard for the ground to absorb all of it when it’s cold outside. This sort of flooding is normal and generally keeps happening until April when everything thaws out and the soil can absorb more water.
The park actually looked pretty good when I visited it. It can be much more flooded than this at the end of the winter. There have been times when the entire sidewalk was covered in ice if we’d recently had a big snowstorm that melted and then refroze overnight.
I will pick this series up again next month when we’ll see what March is like here.
Or at least that’s what it feels like at this time of the year. You see, I get the winter blues. While other people are outside revelling in the snow, ice, and cold weather, I’m inside quietly counting down the days until spring.
If winter in Ontario included as many bright, sunny days as spring and summer did, this post might be quite different.
But our winters include months of long, dark nights that make me half-forget what it’s like to feel warm sunlight on my face.
And having access to enough bright light is important for my mental health. It boggles my mind that some people on this planet live in places that don’t see the sun for months on end. I wouldn’t be able to cope with that well at all unless someone invents a way for humans to go dormant for the winter like real plants do.
Luckily, there are light therapy lamps for wilted houseplants like myself. I’ve been basking in the glow of that artificial sunshine this winter.
Sometimes I sat there and surfed the Internet on my cell phone. It was an especially good way to pass the time when I first accepted the fact that I needed to use one of these lamps but was skeptical about if it would do any good.
If actual plants had opposable thumbs, they might look at cute animal pictures while soaking up light, too, so they didn’t have to count down how many weeks left until spring or how many weeks after that it will take the weather systems in Ontario to shift from cold, wet, and slushy to anything that bears the faintest resemblance to true spring weather.
Then it started to work.The sadness began to lessen. I could concentrate better, I felt less sluggish, my energy levels slowly began rising, and my quality of sleep improved.
Am I back to my old self yet? No, but I’m doing better. That’s something to celebrate, especially as we inch into the time of the year that is the most challenging for me to get through.
For now I sit next to my lamp and chuckle at the fact that I react so much to the lack or the presence of sufficiently strong light. I am entirely human-shaped, and yet somehow I still need to bask in light like a plant to function properly.
When that thought passes, others don’t take its place. In this moment, I am surrounded by light. I breathe in and out as it shines onto me, the desk, the chair, and the floor.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
There are quite a few types of exercise I enjoy.
Weightlifting
Swimming
Dancing
Power Walking
Canoing*
Hiking*
*Although I haven’t done either of these in a long time and definitely would need to recondition my body for them. That is to say, let’s pick the easiest versions of these things if you want to do them with me.
What all of these activities have in common is that they’re non-competitive, fairly easy on the joints in most cases, and can be done solo or in a group.
When I was a kid, the vast majority of my exposure to exercise was team sports.
I’ve never liked team sports, so it took me a while to realize how many forms of exercise are out there that don’t require competition, keeping score, or having winners and losers.
Kudos to those of you who thrive on competition and being the biggest, strongest, and/or fastest person in a group.
But to me, exercise is most enjoyable when it’s about doing something cool either by myself or with a few other laid-back people.
I’d never heard of a book hangover until Jana mentioned them in this week’s prompt.
Most of the strong attachments I formed to books happened when I was a child or teenager. It was fairly rare for them between that point in time and my current age until pretty recently for reasons I haven’t figured out yet.
So this list is a short one, but a few years ago it wouldn’t have existed at all. The links in this post will go to my reviews of these books.
The imagery in this book was so strong that reading it made me feel as if a movie were playing out in my mind. I sure hope this gets made into a film or TV show someday. We’re overdue for an aquatic show, especially one that tackles as many important themes as this one does.
There’s something about reading about pandemics that comforts me every flu season. I still need to read the rest of this series, but, wow, was this a good introduction to this universe! Jumping around among so many different characters really drew me into this world.
I’ve been a huge fan of The Handmaid’s Tale for many years now. It was immensely satisfying to finally get a sequel to it. I can’t wait to see how the updates on so many characters from the first book are integrated into the TV show based on this series, too.
Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
Recently, I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago.
A Theory of Flight
Justina Ireland’s “A Theory of Flight” is the first instalment of this series. It was about a daring plan to build an open-source rocket could help more people escape Earth. Click on the link in the first sentence of this paragraph to read it for free or scroll to the bottom of this post to watch the short film version of it. There are mild spoilers in this post, so reader beware after this sentence.
When I first began this series, I talked about my expectations for hopeful science fiction.
This type of sci-fi isn’t about creating a utopia or brushing aside the very real challenges people face. It’s about finding hope and fighting for a happy ending no matter what the circumstances are.
Carlinda was no stranger to conflict or struggling. She was a black woman who’d grown up in a low-income neighbourhood. This may have been set in a future version of Earth, but the obstacles she faced were the same ones that people from all of these groups face today.
The big difference between her time and ours had to do with how much the environment had degraded thanks to climate change. Life on a hot, polluted planet was beyond difficult, especially for people who didn’t have the money or social clout to get away from Earth.
Cooperation
Carlinda had some money saved up from a well-paid job building spaceships for the wealthy folks who were fleeing Earth for safe colonies on Mars and Europa.
Her funds weren’t enough to get her to either of those places, though, much less help anyone else to join her. This futuristic version of society was so economically stratified that the vast majority of people were doomed to live out short, painful, poverty-stricken lives on Earth.
Or were they?
The beautiful thing about Carlinda’s open-sourced plans for rocket ships was that they could be built out of trash. Very little money was required to create them. All you needed were some workers who understood how to follow the plans and build something that could safely bring a few hundred folks to Europa.
There are some plot twists related to the political ramifications of this plan that are best left up to new readers to discover for themselves. Still, I loved seeing how the small percentage of humans who were wealthy and politically powerful reacted to the idea of ordinary folks taking their own fates into their hands.
Not only did it add a layer of urgency to the plot, it gave Carlinda and the people working with her even more of an incentive to keep building and to share their knowledge with as many other poor folks as possible.
A better world is possible, and it all begins with regular people banding together to creatively solve problems that are too big for any one person to fix on their own.
Content warning: racism, sexism, a few brief scenes involving blood, death of a pet, and sexual harassment. I will only mention the first three items in this list in my review.
The Shape of Water is a dark fantasy romance about a lonely janitor who falls in love with an amphibious humanoid creature who is being held in captivity by the U.S. government. It is set in 1962 in an undisclosed government facility.
This film was directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. It won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as other honours at the Golden Globes, British Film Academy Awards, and the Critic’s Choice Awards.
The tags for this post do contain mild spoilers. I will not be discussing them in detail today but wanted to label this correctly for future readers.
Characters
Sally Hawkins as Elisa Eposito
Elisa was a mute woman who worked as a cleaner at a secret underground government facility. Her dear friend and chosen family member Giles described her as “the princess without voice.” She has a whimsical personality that found joy in little things like dancing down the hall or gently interacting with everyone she met.
While I can’t go into her backstory without sharing spoilers, I will say that she was someone who was quite alone in the world. She had no genetic relatives to rely upon.
Doug Jones as Amphibian Man
The Amphibian Man could not speak, but he was intelligent. Very little was shared about his background in this film other than the fact that he was the first of his kind discovered by humans.
Richard Jenkins as Giles
As mentioned above, Giles was Elisa’s dear neighbor and friend. He’d worked as an adverting illustrator for many years but was struggling to find work as his industry switched from painting to photographs for the imagery in ads.
He was a kind, gentle, creative man who could be a little absent-minded when it came to looking after basic needs like fixing himself dinner. Like Elise, he was quite alone in the world for reasons I’ll leave to future viewers to discover for themselves.
Octavia Spencer as Zelda Fuller
Zelda was Elisa’s co-worker and friend who served as her sign language interpreter at work. Her personality was assertive and opinionated, the opposite of how Elisa generally behaved.
Michael Shannon as Richard Strickland
Richard was a United States Colonel in charge of the project to study the “asset,” as they referred to the Amphibian Man. He followed protocol strictly and was obsessed with getting the results his bosses expected.
Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Robert Hoffstetler
Dr. Hoffstetler was the physician who was given the responsibility of figuring out the physiology of the Amphibian Man’s body. The U.S. government hoped to learn how to create astronauts who could better adapt to the rigours of space exploration by learning how this creature was capable of breathing both air and water.
David Hewlett as Fleming
Fleming was the laboratory’s head of security. He was a rigid, unfriendly man who expected perfection from himself and everyone around him.
My Review
Prepare yourselves for some gushing. This was such a good story.
There was an immensely satisfying amount of foreshadowing. I’d imagine that anyone who is familiar with the romance or science fiction genres could spot the biggest plot twists coming ahead of time. This wasn’t the sort of film that relied on the audience not knowing what to expect next. It was how the characters reacted to them that was important, and this was something the filmmakers showed beautifully.
The cinematography was beautiful. I was immediately drawn into the plot thanks to how much effort was put into constructing this era. It was also interesting to watch shots that had important things happening in both the foreground and background. They added so many layers of meaning to the storyline.
Octavia Spencer and Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water.
I did find myself wishing that the racism, sexism, and other types of discrimination in this era was presented in a more nuanced manner. In my experiences with sexism and biphobia, a lot of it can be subtle depending on who is around and what prejudiced folks think they can get away with. People can convey so much with body language and the words they do (or don’t) use that I was surprised by how blatant everything was here.
Perhaps things were radically different in 1962 in this regard. I wasn’t alive then and will defer to people who may say this portrayal is more accurate than I originally thought it was. But I still would have liked to see these topics handled a little more sensitively. (I will also defer to other reviewers to discuss their personal experiences with racism and ableism as it relates to this point).
With that being said, I still really liked seeing how these various types of prejudice were not only expressed but intersected with each other and this is my only criticism of a film I otherwise loved. The storytellers did a good job of showing how someone might be advantaged in one area (e.g. race, social class, or gender) while still oppressed in others (e.g. disability or sexual orientation).
The numerous references to water in this film were well done. They included everything from bathing to hard-boiling eggs, and they were just the tip of the iceberg. One of the things I enjoyed the most as I was watching it was to take note of all of the aquatic-themed moments that needed a little more effort to take notice of. It was satisfying to add them to my list of these references and try to guess where the storytellers would subtly introduce the next one.
This isn’t a criticism in any way, but I did want to make note of the disclaimer about blood in this tale. There were a few scenes that included characters who were bleeding from non-accidental injuries. While the violence that caused these injuries was briefly shown on screen, I always like to warn my readers ahead of time about stuff like this. I’d be happy to discuss it in full, spoiler-y detail in private with anyone who needs to figure out if this is the right thing for them to watch.
I’d heartily recommendThe Shape of Water to anyone who enjoys the romance or speculative fiction genres.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
I am a creature of habit. This is especially true when it comes to what I reread and when I return to those old, friendly stories. Often my urge to reread things are tied to the seasons of the year and specific holidays.
Since we’re currently in the middle of winter, I tweaked this week’s topic a bit so I could talk about the books I’m most likely to reread at this time of the year.
I first read this book one winter when I was in high school. Cold, dark weather makes me feel sad and glum at times. There was something oddly comforting about reading about a character whose troubles were much bigger than my own.
The happy ending she eventually received is a nice mood lifter as well.
There comes a time every March when I feel like winter will linger on until the end of time itself.
This is when I like to pull out the first Chronicles of Narnia book and read about an enchanted winter that lasted there for a century and never included a single Christmas to look forward to. Imagine how tired of the cold and snow the Narnians must have been by that final year! And yet spring did arrive for them eventually, so I can have hope that the same thing will happen for our completely non-magical winters, too.
As much as I dislike winters in southern Ontario, there are places that are much colder, snowier, and darker than Toronto. The Snow Child is set in Alaska about a hundred years ago. Back then the people who lived there were basically snowed into their homes for months on end, especially if you lived out in the country away from any towns.
The main characters were a couple who had longed for a child for many years. When a little girl showed up in the middle of a fierce blizzard, they took her in while trying to figure out where on Earth she must have come from.
Figuring out what was happening with her and with the kind couple who looked after her is so engrossing. I could reread this book a dozen times and still want more.
This week’s prompt is a love freebie, so I decided to share some romantic quotes for it since this isn’t actually a holiday I observe.
How many of the other Top Ten Tuesday participants live in countries where candy conversation hearts are sold at this time of the year? I enjoy them, but I haven’t seen them around much the last couple of years. Here’s hoping that changes soon.
If you celebrate Valentine’s Day and have a different favourite candy from it, I’d like to know about that, too!
2. “And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King.
3. “Come sleep with me: We won’t make Love, Love will make us.”
― Julio Cortázar
4. “It’s bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They’re not. They’re just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.”
― Rachel Cohn, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List
5. “your hand
touching mine.
this is how
galaxies
collide.”
― Sanober Khan
6. “Love is too precious to be ashamed of.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, A Stroke of Midnight
7. “Before I fell
in love with words,
with setting skies
and singing birds—
it was you I fell
in love with first.”
― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure
8. “Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don’t know you’re having one until you’re right in the middle of it.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,
10. “Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Last year I interviewed spring and autumn. Today I’m back with an exclusive interview with winter!
I’ll conclude this series with an interview with summer later on this year…that is, assuming winter eventually decides to concede their post.
Winter: Hey, I heard that!
Lydia: My apologies. I didn’t think you’d join us quite so soon.
Winter: Well, I was a little tardy showing up this year. And spring did warn me about you. 😉
Lydia: Heh, I heard a few things about you from spring as well. How have you been?
Winter: Things are changing rapidly for me. I’m sure you’ve all noticed how winter is different than it was in generations past.
Lydia: Yes, we sure have. How has climate change affected your work? It sure seems like your season has changed the most as a result of it so far.
Winter: I’ve noticed the same thing. Of course there have been shifts in our patterns in the past, but never this severe or rapid. It’s one thing to switch off duties with spring or autumn during the transition periods, but now it’s happening in the middle of my shift!
Lydia: That must make managing the weather pretty tricky.
Winter: It sure does. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even finally going to meet Summer one of these days. Spring and summer say we have oddly similar personalities.
Lydia: Hopefully, that won’t happen. Summer has been dealing with extreme temperatures, too.
Winter: What, you don’t want a heatwave and a blizzard in the same day?
Lydia: As tempting as that would be in the heat of August, I think the plants wouldn’t like that.
Winter: Well, I don’t like the plants!
Lydia: Wait, what?
Winter: I’m totally joking there. I forget that not everyone gets my frosty sense of humour.
Lydia: Okay, good. I was quite surprised for a second.
Winter: I’m not actually supposed to know the plants. Most of them die or hibernate by the time I show up, and the few stragglers left aren’t the best conversationalists.
Lydia: Does this mean all of the seasons are able to talk to the plants?
Winter: Yes, but humans weren’t supposed to know that. Forget I said anything.
Lydia: No worries, I won’t press the issue, but I’m going to keep this in mind for my conversation with Summer.
Winter: Just don’t tell them I said anything. Proprietary secrets of the trade and all. So what else do you want to know?
Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
I’m going to perform a magic trick today and give Internet access and knowledge of how to use it to the characters on this list who didn’t actually live in times and places where social media, much less the Internet itself, existed.
My name is Lydia, and I’m a human houseplant.
*Although I haven’t done either of these in a long time and definitely would need to recondition my body for them. That is to say, let’s pick the easiest versions of these things if you want to do them with me.
I’d never heard of a book hangover until Jana mentioned them in this week’s prompt.
Content warning: racism, sexism, a few brief scenes involving blood, death of a pet, and sexual harassment. I will only mention the first three items in this list in my review.
2. “And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many.”
8. “Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don’t know you’re having one until you’re right in the middle of it.”
Last year I interviewed 
Winter: It sure does. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even finally going to meet Summer one of these days. Spring and summer say we have oddly similar personalities.
Lydia: What can you tell me about