paperback writer

Now you can order Bowl of Light in a paperback format, here. Or you could ask your library to order it, or your local bookstore. The Kindle version is another way to go, for which see the post below. But a paperback offers you that yesteryear experience of holding a book in your hand and turning pages, or lending it to somebody.

Bowl of Light is available now

You can go here to buy Bowl of Light as an e-book. At that same site, you can download a free Kindle app that allows you to read e-books on your computer. It's a very nice app if you don't have a Kindle but still want to get the book.

The book made-of-paper will be ready in the next week or so. I'll post about it when it's available.

launching a Bowl of Light

After dillying and dallying around about a book I've decided to just go ahead and publish it on my own. So, it's an e-book, called Bowl of Light, and it will be available through Kindle Books on Amazon.com in the next few days.

I'm quite happy with this book, which is a collection of essays, most of which began their lives as blog posts. The book is a whole nother kettle of fish from the blog. The strengths of a blog come from its immediacy and the sense that every day offers some surprising new variable. The strengths of a book come from a greater sense of coherence and maybe a greater reflective quality. Also, just as a music video may take away from the experience of a song by limiting the hearer's imagination, a blog's images can sometimes diminish the imaginative power of the written word.

On the home front, I think our grieving over the island is drawing to a close. I find that my gratitude for the experience has begun to outweigh my sadness over its loss. And here in Montreal, the epic struggle between light and darkness appears to have been decided in favour of light, once again. It's still cold, but the days are getting longer.

a lovely award for Greg

Greg was awarded the prize for best speciality column by the Atlantic Community Newspaper Association. Many thanks to Greg Bennett, editor of the Shelburne County Coast Guard, for nominating Greg's column.

I have copied the description of the award below, since you would only be able to read the newspaper page with a magnifying glass. It's quite an honour for Greg, and, as I wrote earlier when he was nominated, bitter-sweet.

Here's what the judge wrote:

Greg Brown's thoughtful and inspiring ruminations on nature and home life were a pleasure to read, not only because they are so well written, but because each column pays off in unexpected ways.

Crossroads takes first place as this year's Best Speciality Column because it's so easy for me to imagine regular readers of the Shelburne County Coast Guard anticipating its appearance in their weekly paper. It's obvious Brown strives to make his column accessible to everyone.

His ability to weave Christian parables into the narrative with subtlety and nuance expertly avoids the tendency for columnists working in this vein to come across as heavy handed.

Great work.

Greg and short in same phrase

Really, I never think of the words "Greg" and "short" very close to each other. Since he's a very tall person. But we learned today that his writing has been short-listed for an award, so there you go.
His regular column in The Shelburne County Coastguard is one of three nominees for Best Specialty Column by The Atlantic Community Newspapers Association.

That's quite an honour!

daughters of the province, though gone away

Is Elizabeth Bishop a Nova Scotia poet? She spent formative time here, with her maternal grandparents. But mostly she lived around: in Massachusetts and the Florida Keys and Brazil, among other places. She was a bit of a vagabond, and not always by her own choice. Still, Nova Scotia was a deep well for Bishop, and she returned to drink from it over and over.

Howard Norman is another writer associated with Nova Scotia, although I don't think he has ever lived here for any length of time. He now lives in the Washington DC area and teaches at The University of Maryland. Much of his fiction has been set in Nova Scotia, though. Even though he's not from around here, the province has taken hold of him. He, too, drinks from this well.

His most recent book, What is Left the Daughter (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2010), is set in Halifax and in the Minas Basin area, near Bishop's nesting ground, Great Village. It's a connection he lightly touches with his description of the Esso station in Great Village and passing reference to a local poet.

What is Left the Daughter is a lyrical tale composed within the framework of looming war with Germany, filtered through local senses. A set of quiet lives, mostly interwoven at the village level, suddenly take a hard turn into the extreme. The rest is consequences, and memory. His artfully composed story evokes a sense of village life in Nova Scotia in the 1930s and 1940s, and the grim teeming chaos of Halifax during the war years. The tone is mostly regret, which seeps through the pages like grey fog.

Anne Barclay Priest

Mary Morse and Leroy d"Entremont emailed us last night to let us know that Anne Barclay Priest had died. Anne was a good friend to many people, including Elizabeth Hyde, who owned this house before us, and her daughter Joanna, and Mary and Leroy, who took care of her Blue Island sheep when she was back in New York, and later bought the flock from her. We were fortunate that she reached out to us newcomers as well, soon after we moved here, and so began a brief and lively friendship of email exchanges in the winter and a visit each summer. We learned right away what so many other people know better than we: that anything having to do with Anne was lively, to say the least.

Besides the post entitled How to Keep Warm you can read a little bit more about Anne in posts here, here and here.

You can read about her memoir, Trafficking in Sheep: From Off-Broadway, New York, to Blue Island, Nova Scotia (The Countryman Press, 2008), here. The beautiful photograph of Anne on the book's cover was taken during a sheep gathering here on McNutt's Island.

Here's how Anne concludes her memoir:

I have asked myself questions about my life in Nova Scotia. What if I had purchased a piece of land in another part of the province? I never would have bought the island, never bought sheep, never heard of Brian Nettleton. It was an immense crossroads, one that never in my wildest dreams I could have foreseen. I don't regret one bit choosing the road I did. It has brought a richness and beauty to my life that I love and embrace, as well as many friends. And so what it the people in Greenville as well as West Green Harbour think I'm off my rocker? They could think worse. And probably have.

The Reader reviews Island Year

The Halifax Public Libraries staff recommends books on their daily blog, The Reader, so it was a pleasure to read David Hansen's review of Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia here.

Launch for Island Year on May 18th

We are so excited that Greg's book is having its launch. We actually did not know what a "launch" was. I'm still not certain. But I think I'm about to learn.

The launch for Island Year:Finding Nova Scotia is sponsored and hosted by The Whirligig Book Shop on Water Street in Shelburne. Whirligig owners Betty and Bill Camp have provided the Shelburne area with this extraordinary place where you can not only find or order the book you want, but also discover books that you didn't know you needed until you see them there. And The Whirligig is also a kind of meeting place where you never know who you'll run into, or what local goings-on you 'll hear about.

Island Year will launch on May 18th at 7:00 pm, at Osprey Arts Centre, another terrific Shelburne institution. But there's no need to wait for the launch to buy Greg's book. It's available at The Whirligig right now!

Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia

Greg's book is out! The cover may look familiar -- we both love this picture, which Greg took on the perfect foggy day. Here are the book summary and author biography from the back cover:

"As they neared retirement, Greg Brown and his wife Anne gave up their life in the U.S. to settle on a windswept Nova Scotia island inhabited by wild sheep and deer, where harbour seals sing in the fog and an old lighthouse still keeps watch over the North Atlantic. Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia tells the story of the surprises, challenges and discoveries of their first year alone on an island as they restored an old fisherman's house, explored the island, and began to learn how to live a Nova Scotia way of life.

This is a story for anyone who dreams of exchanging a fast-paced, high-tech life for something slower and just maybe more meaningful. This is a story about the night sky and the dawn chorus, lobsters and wild raspberries, a famous pirate, the kindness of others, and getting in touch with yourself again. Funny and inspiring, this book redefines what a rich life can mean.

Greg Brown was born and raised in California. His grandfather was from Pugwash, and Nova Scotia was part of family lore. As a young man he worked with German conscientious objectors in West Berlin, placing them in volunteer service positions in the United States and Canada. He served for twenty years as a pastor in The United Methodist Church in Washington DC. Also trained as a pastoral counselor, Greg worked with clergy and others in the practice of leadership skills. He restored old houses and was the cook on a tall ship. His passion for restoration, his love of the sea and his Nova Scotian roots prompted a life-changing move to Canada, where he is now a Landed Immigrant. He lives on McNutt's Island in southwestern Nova Scotia with his wife Anne, who reports on their activities at www.novascotiaisland.blogspot.com."

You can order Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia (Pottersfield Press) from your local bookstore, or Nimbus Publishing, which is the distributor for Pottersfield Press and ships anywhere, or Chapters/ Indigo, or, soon, the other usual online places (the publication date is April 30). Or ask your library to buy it!

A reading life

There were lots of old books in our house when we first arrived. Some were too dampish and mildewed  to keep. Those are now slowly returning to the earth from whence they came, in a place only I know about. Others are valuable resource books, like The World of the White-tailed Deer, by Leonard Lee Rue III (Philadelphia, 1962); A Field Guide to Wildflowers, by Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny (Boston, 1968); The Bottle Collector, by Azor Vienneau (Halifax, 1969), which sounds like a title for a novel, and has an entire section on Nova Scotian bottles; and A Reverence for Wood, by Eric Sloane (New York, 1965). In the realm of fiction we have A Century of Sea Stories, edited by Rafael Sabatini (London, n.d.), an anthology including excerpts from some of the classics as well as stories and writers I'd never heard of. It's a fine haul that can turn a quiet night in front of the fire into an exciting adventure, or at least into a greater knowledge of bottles.

Then there's the disaster-at-sea genre. Our house came complete with a copy of The Tragic Story of the Empress of Ireland: An Authentic Account of the Most Horrible Disaster in Canadian History, Constructed from the Real Facts Obtained from Those on Board Who Survived, And Other Great Sea Disasters, by Logan Marshall (n.p.,1914). Those Other Great Sea Disasters include an account of the S.S. Atlantic, which ran aground outside of Halifax on April Fool's Day, 1873, with enormous loss of life.

The story of Atlantic has been told again, by Greg Cochkanoff and Bob Chaulk, in SS Atlantic: The White Star Line's First Disaster at Sea (Goose Lane, Fredericton, NB, 2009). I am not a big fan of disaster-at-sea, but SS Atlantic has been nominated for various prizes this year, and Goose Lane is a very interesting publisher, so I sprang for it.

Or rather, I didn't spring for it. Instead, I used my now default method of acquiring books. If it wasn't already in the house when we came here, or if I didn't bring it with me, carting boxes and boxes of a much-winnowed-down collection across the harbour (and now they, too, belong to the house, forever, since as you may remember: lots of things come onto the island, but nothing ever goes off), then I borrowed it from the Western Counties Regional Library.

It's so much fun to borrow books from our library. I noodle around on line and read reviews. I write down the title and author of whatever looks interesting. As a Landed Immigrant, always eager to learn more about my chosen country, I go especially for Canadian literature and non-fiction. Books that hint they may allow me a glimpse into the shy and elusive Canadian soul. Then I log onto my library account and reserve the books. If it's a hot new book, like Michael Crummey's Galore, then I'll be on a waiting list for a while. It took a long time to get Too Much Happiness, and The Bishop's Man, and Under This Unbroken Sky, and The Winter Vault, which were all nominated for recent prizes, even though Alice Munro turned down her nomination. Only one of those books, by the way, contained very much happiness.

On the other hand, Lisa Moore's startlingly fabulous February, joyously heartbreaking or heartbreakingly joyous, and David Adams Richards' brilliant and infuriating Mercy Among the Children, came right away. Anyway, the waits, when they come, are worth it, and it's not like I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I do have The Bottle Collector after all.

If the Western Regional Library doesn't have the book I want, I can order it from another regional library in Nova Scotia, or from the Halifax Public Library, or from Acadia University in Wolfeville. Eventually, from across the Province, the books of my desire arrive at the McKay Memorial Library in Shelburne. They sit on a shelf with my name attached until Greg stops by and pick them up, along with whatever he has ordered for himself. I do think the library is one of the world's best inventions. And the internet, too.  A fabulous combination for someone whose reading habit can get very expensive, and lives on an island. Or anywhere, for that matter.
                                           
So I got SS Atlantic from the library. And I'm glad I did. It's a gripping, detailed account of a colossal failure made up of carelessness and negligence, poor communication among the officers, and a deadly combination of ignorance and overconfidence, with the inevitable result of disorientation. Not good when you are steaming full throttle at a huge rock. Which most of us find ourselves doing at some point in our lives, I guess, so it's a cautionary tale. I came away with fresh appreciation for the dangers of these North Atlantic waters and this Nova Scotia coast, and for the wondrous lighthouses along its shore.

Reading locally: Bay of Fundy Blog

From deep within the Bay of Fundy, at Parrsboro, comes the blog called Bay of Fundy Blog. Here's what Terri writes in her profile:

So here I was on the Bay of Fundy, minding my own business, when I realized that normal people don't get to see 100 billion tonnes of seawater flowing back and forth in front of their kitchen windows every day. As someone who has grown up living and working here, I've taken it upon myself to blog my experiences with the highest tides on the planet.

Really, you need to visit this blog. The photographs are amazing, the lay-out is lovely, and Terri's sparkly posts are fascinating takes on life in a very odd place indeed. You'll thank me for this.

Making room

The beams in our house are held together with wooden pegs instead of nails, even though the house was built around 1858 and nails would certainly have been available. But back then people didn't like to innovate when it came to building their houses. Besides, they were fishermen, and boats were built with pegs. William Perry and his father Jonathan built this house in the traditional way, which was tried and true.
The beams are notched so that they fit neatly together, and the whole weight provides stability and support.
The house that William and Jonathan Perry built has stood the test of gale force winds for a century and a half.

The house reminds me of Peter Rankin's beautiful illustrations in Joanne Taylor's story of a nineteenth century Cape Breton house, Making Room (McClelland, 2004).

Reading locally: Hodgepodge at Nova News Now

Crossing the province again we come to Digby, on the Bay of Fundy, where John DeMings writes under Hodgepodge for the NovaNewsNow blog. John is also the editor of The Digby Courier. But he seems to enjoy the freedom of posting a lovely or compelling photograph, or of writing a reflective piece about some aspect of the local neighbourhood when he feels inspired. And this man does feel inspired pretty often. With John, you get an insider's take on Digby: its politics, its economy, its people, its beauty, its stories.

Reading locally: Alice In Paris Loves Art and Tea

I'm a big fan of Shelagh Duffett's Alice in Paris Loves Art and Tea. What a spirit! First of all, her photographs are gorgeous, every one. What an eye she has. Then, she lives in the great Nova Scotia city of Halifax. I think you really need a guide like Shelagh to take you around there, down the little lanes and alleyways, to the library, to the parks and the cafes and shops, and special events like the Queen's Birthday that you might not get to, otherwise. She is adventurous and she is filled with good cheer, and you will be, too, just from, as she says, popping by.

Reading locally: Post aus West Head

Margrit at Post aus West Head blogs in both English and German. (There's really quite a significant German population here.) West Head is a lovely place on the south shore, south of Lockeport, on Jordan Bay, which is the next bay east of Shelburne Harbour. It is not at all on the tourist path. Margrit's blog gives you the opportunity to see West Head and the south shore from her perspective. She takes beautiful photographs, and her posts give you the flavour of a quietly stunning part of the world.

A bill-of-sale from the black pilots

Clara Dennis was an energetic and devoted young Nova Scotian who traveled about her native province in the early 1930s, camera at the ready and pen in hand. She captured and recorded images and tales that would otherwise have been long-forgotten by now. Her photographs -- the glass negatives are housed at the Nova Scotia Archives -- are a treasured resource. She wrote two books about her travels into the nooks and crannies of the province.

In the first of these, published in 1934, she tells of her visit to Cape Roseway Lighthouse on McNutt's Island.

During her visit she has a long conversation with the lightkeeper, whom she does not name. Here is Clara's account:*

"Col. McNutt's house was on the northern end of the island," said the lightkeeper. "There were land holders all over the island later. Before the light was built, negroes used to live on the east side. They piloted vessels in and out of the harbour and were known as 'Black Pilots.' Four of them sold fifty acres adjoining the lighthouse to Alexander Cockeren [sic], the first lightkeeper. I'm going to show you the bill-of-sale. The building of the light put the black pilots out of commission."

The ancient document was produced. It ran:

Know all men by these presents that we, London Jackson, Richard Leah, James Robertson and Jane Thompson mother of James Jackson, deceased, -- black pilots now of Shelburne in the province of Nova Scotia, for and in consideration of the sum of five shillings current money of the province aforesaid to us severally in hand paid at the ensealing and delivery of these presents by Alexander Hood Cocken of Shelburne aforesaid, Mariner, the receipt whereof we do hereby severally acknowledge and so be therewith fully contented, satisfied, and paid, and thereof and of every part thereof do hereby acquit and discharge the said Alexander Hood Cocken, his Executors, Administrators, and Assigns have granted, bargained, sold and these presents do fully and clearly and absolutely grant, bargain, tell and release under said Alexander Hood Cocken, all and whole a certain tract, field, parcel and lot of land situate lying and being on the east side of McNutt's Island adjoining the lot on which the lighthouse is erected being Lot 23, containing fifty acres to have and hold the above ascribed lot unto Alexander Hood Cocken, his Executors, Administrators and Assigns forever.

We the above named Grantors for ourselves, our Executors, Administrators do covenant and agree to and with the above named Alexander Hood Cocken, his Executors, Administrators and Assigns to warrant and defend the sale of the above described lot against all persons whatsoever. In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands and seals the fourth day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

Dennis concludes: "The X's made by the dusky London and the other three, together with their thumb-imprinted seals, made the bargain irrevocable."

It all seems quite official and legal and final. But there are one or two details that make me wonder. The first lightkeeper was Alexander Cocken, who was the father of Alexander Hood Cocken. Alexander Hood Cocken the son became lightkeeper after his father's death, and served until his own death in the 1860s. But in 1789 Alexander Hood Cocken was either not yet born or a tiny child. It seems a curious inconsistency to name the son as party to the contract, rather than the father -- a tiny anachronism, like a little red flag.

It makes me wonder whether the bill-of-sale Clara Dennis saw that day was written down later on, as a record of something that had actually taken place without benefit of documentation. Or maybe the original deed was lost, and later reconstructed from a memory of how, once upon a time, the pilots sold Lot 23 to the lightkeeper.

Then, think of Clara here, in the lightkeeper's house, asking whether she could copy the bill-of-sale, and pulling out her notebook and pen to do that. As far as I know, the document that the lightkeeper showed her that day no longer exists. If it did exist we might be able to find clues in its physical appearance -- the paper it was written on, the kind of ink, the handwriting.

As it is, the bill-of-sale that you are reading on your computer screen is a bit ghostly: at best it's a copy of a copy of a copy. But for all its unknowns, it does tell us something about James Robertson and Richard Leach and London Jackson and James Jackson, the four black pilots who arrived in Port Roseway with their families in 1783 and who later received Lot 23 in recognition of their service to the British during the Revolution. Through this bill-of-sale the pilots whisper: "We were here."

*Clara Dennis, Down in Nova Scotia: my own, my native land (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1934) 342-343. The Nova Scotia Archives has a wonderful virtual exhibit on Clara Dennis, here.

You can read earlier posts about the black pilots by clicking on the label black pilots at the right hand side of the blog.

Reading locally: Flandrum Hill

Amy-Lynn Bell is the creator of the blog Flandrum Hill. Her neck of the Nova Scotia woods is the region called Cow Bay, along the Atlantic coast, just east of Halifax and Dartmouth. It is salt marsh and sea and sky, and so much more. Flandrum Hill focuses on the natural world experienced at the scale of your own backyard. Since this backyard's in Nova Scotia, it can be pretty spectacular.

Amy-Lynn discovers the wonder of the tiniest thing and shares it with her readers. She is a wonderful writer. She is a well-informed naturalist. Her photography is breath-taking. She has the eye of an artist, which she also is. She has a deep sense of the spiritual dimension that informs all living things. And she's funny.

I always learn something new from Flandrum Hill. This is a blog that helps me see the world more clearly, by looking closely at a small corner of it.

Reading locally: Life With Yourgogirl

How amazing it is, really, that anybody with access to a computer and the internet can now write for the world. It's easy to forget that it hasn't always been this way. And how easily we seem to adapt, so that what is still quite astonishing we now treat as ordinary. The world of print continues to shrink and fold as the era of Gutenberg sputters to a close. But don't be sad. Online the world of news and information expands and unfolds like one of those magic flowers dropped into a glass of water, revealing unimaginably crinkly surface areas filled with curious nooks and quirks and crannies that never would have made it into print, back in the old days.

Now dedicated authors can write for a loyal audience of a couple of hundred or so. Not everybody in the world will ever care about the remote places of Nova Scotia, for instance. But what extravagant riches are strewn at the feet of those who do!

I'm certain I haven't discovered every terrific Nova Scotia blog that's reporting out from the watery wind-blown crevices, the cloud-swept skies, the placid marshes and inlets of the province. But I have come across a few. So let's begin a tour of them.

Life With Yourgogirl is Carla Allen's Yarmouth-and-south-west-Nova-Scotia-based blog. Carla is a reporter for The Yarmouth Vanguard and she writes a syndicated gardening column, too. But Carla is so much more than the sum of her professional writing. She truly will do anything, I believe, for the adventure of it. At the beginning of lobster season, that meant working as the bander on her cousin's lobster boat The Scalded Witch. Last summer it meant a visit to Seal Island, a hard-to-get-to place. Then there are the unexpected detours down never-traveled roads, and who knows what you will find along the way? She has her reporter's instinct for what makes a good story. Plus she's a terrific writer. Hitch a ride with Carla's blog and you will discover life in Nova Scotia that's really real.

The foghorn building at Cape Roseway

McNutt's foghorn ... seems the voice of fog itself. Surely if a fog could speak it would speak in these accents.*

The foghorn house at Cape Roseway is the oldest building that remains there. The original lighthouse was built in 1788, but was replaced after it was severely damaged in 1959. This undated photograph by Clara Dennis of the foghorn building and the original lighthouse was probably taken in the early 1930s, when she is known to have visited Cape Roseway.

Today the fog alarm building -- which was built in 1916-1917 to replace an earlier structure -- is an empty ruin looking out to sea.
A undated Canada Department of Transportation photograph shows the fog alarm. It would have required constant tending by the lighthouse keepers when frequent fogs made the coastline and the lighthouses invisible to ships at sea.
This photograph from the Canada Department of Transportation shows the original light and the fog alarm. Three unidentified men and a boy are standing in the foreground. These may be the lightkeepers and assistant lightkeepers, and possibly includes John McKenna, the lighthouse artist.
A foghorn operated at Cape Roseway from 1884 until it was taken out of service in 1989. Until then its sound was a familiar and perhaps comforting part of local life, heard both at sea and on land for a century.

Howard Walden wrote a book about his experiences in the 1960s as a summer resident at the village of Jordan Bay, three miles away from McNutt's Island.* He described a visit with the lightkeeper at Cape Roseway. He didn't identify the lightkeeper, but it was most likely Harry Van Buskirk. The keeper explained to Howard Walden how the foghorn worked.
"The decision to start the horn customarily needed two of three votes. When a fog is gathering the vote is cast: if two of the three keepers say they can no longer see the lighthouse at Western Head, five miles to the east, or that at Cape Negro equidistant to the west, the button is pushed to start the horn. Once started, the horn continues at its 50-second intervals until, perhaps hours or days later, another button is pushed to stop it.

'To make it a bit more inexact,' [the lightkeeper] said, 'if an off-duty keeper is asleep at voting time we don't wake him up. We settle it between the two of us.'"

The voice of the fog is silent now -- a whole dimension of human ingenuity and effort superceded by more precise and reliable technology.

Canada Department of Transportation photos and photo by Clara Dennis are courtesy of NSARM. The Virtual Archives at NSARM has a wonderful collection of photographs and documents on Nova Scotia's lighthouses.

*Howard T. Walden, 2nd, Anchorage Northeast (New York, William Morrow & Co., 1971), pages 81 and 159. Used by permission.

The Cape Roseway entry at The Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society gives additional detail and history about the light and the foghorn.