Author: bee

Love: Really, All you Need

I adore chick flicks, cutesy films that you can rely on to have a happy ending. When I happened upon Jenny’s Wedding, I wanted to watch it because it has two of my favourite actresses, Katherine Heigl and Alexis Bledel. Now, before I launch into a heartfelt review of this movie, I should put forth the caveat that this movie is a heavy one. It weighs down on the emotional quota really really hard, so unless you are comfortable with your emotional side and can handle the flood of emotions you will feel, tread with caution.

Opening with a seemingly-normal family, the film hinges on a truth that lies just below the surface and could destroy the family if it comes out. Jenny (Heigl) is a gay woman who has been hiding her sexuality from her very traditional family all her life. Prodding at the nuclear family structure, this movie delves into the various sides of love. Psychology has dissected love into seven different types: Eros (romantic love), Philia (the love between friends), Storge (familial love), Agape (love for strangers, nature and/or God), Ludus (love for pleasure), Pragma (love based on duty or long-term needs) and Philautia (self-love which can be either healthy or not)  We see many of these types of love in this movie: the love between a mother and her daughter (Storge), the love between a father and his daughter (Storge), the love between siblings (Storge), the love between same-sex couples (Eros), the love of self in a healthy context (Philautia), the love of friends (Philia) and the love of a family as a whole. This movie goes the extra mile to remind us that love comes in so many different shapes and sizes, and real love is big enough to overcome anything, big enough to shine into the darkness that exists within us, big enough to forgive the most hurtful of actions or words, big enough to accept despite the challenges that come with the acceptance and big enough to put another before oneself. I found my heart being pulled in all the directions that this movie could possibly take. Heigl deserves a standing ovation for her performance, as do Tom Wilkinson who plays her father, Eddie, and Linda Emond who is her mother, Rose. While Bledel’s is more of a supporting role as Jenny’s girlfriend, Kitty, she plays it well

This movie takes on a much more serious portrait of a chick flick, using this medium to tap into some very nuanced and important issues that conventional families face these days. With themes of love in all its facets, sexuality, acceptance, forgiveness and family among others, this movie is a must-watch. You, if you don’t already, begin to understand that although people within a family are so different from each other, each is deserving of the comfort and acceptance that comes with belonging to a place of real love. After all, we are all on this earth looking for the same things: love and acceptance.

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When Calls the Heart: A Feel-Good Kinda Show

The quality of T.V. shows these days is not particularly consistent. Of course it depends on what you’re into, with some people thriving on The Walking Dead, or others preferring Vision T.V. on Rogers Cable here in Canada for its smart selection of classic British, Canadian and American shows. I’m not a huge subscriber of cable television; maybe if I had more time I would spend it in front of the big box, however, every now and then I come across a show that I find particularly engaging.

I recently happened upon a Canadian-American period drama (LOVE me my period dramas) called When Calls the Heart, which is based on Janette Oke’s book by the same name. Now, because I am a sucker for history and romance, this was a perfect show to begin binge-watching. Set in the little town of Coal Valley (later called Hope Valley) in Alberta, Canada, this Western Frontier enactment is all about the feel goods. Only sometimes bordering on the slightly cheesy (I think because my generation is just pumped-full of cynicism), this drama delivers such a fantastic portfolio of lessons to build character. Spanning themes of love, forgiveness, compassion, hope, betrayal, death, grief, abandonment, sabotage and justice, this series just leaves you feeling like a better person for having watched it. A lot of us like drama packed with action and courtroom banter and loaded with wit and possibly nonsense comedy, but this show is ‘pure’, for lack of a better word. It upholds the values of kindness, compassion, respect, and love among a list of others, and in so doing provides a lens of purity in our morally disintegrating 21st-century.

Leading lady Elizabeth Thatcher, played by American actress Erin Krakow, is a big city socialite who has come to Coal Valley to begin her dream of being a teacher. Elizabeth is a headstrong woman who needs a bit of roughing around the edges, but who is kind, smart and pioneering in many ways. With a plethora of roles the likes of the dashing Mountie Jack Thornton played by Australian actor Daniel Lissing, the strong widow (and my favourite character) Abigail Stanton played by Full House‘s Lori Loughlin, the bubbly actress Rosemary LeVeaux played by Canadian actress Pascale Hutton, this show boasts a cast of very colourful and endearing characters. You’ll be surprised at how invested you become in these characters when you worry for Abigail’s safety or fret for Jack’s life.

What I love most about this show is that it portrays women in a leading role of strength and honour. The women are forward-thinkers and brave, and showcased in ways that complement their male counterparts. To me this show embodies a lot of what equality of the sexes needs to look like. Men respect women, and women respect men, and I think that it is this lesson that stays with me the most as I wait for Season 4 of this well-produced drama to begin next year. The irony of this statement is not lost on me as this show set a hundred years ago is more progressive than the deluge of TV we see these days where the sexes are just tossed around into total chaos. There is respect in relationships, and couples take their time to get to know each other and value their growing fondness for each other. There is honour, and people do the right thing by each other. There is forgiveness and hope, there is love and unrestrained compassion for strangers. And let’s not even sidestep the incredible chemistry between Erin Krakow’s and Daniel Lissing’s characters! Other progressive themes that struck me are the modern concepts around differentiated teaching and creative strategies for hands-on learning (as a teacher these nuances are quite intriguing), pushing for female education beyond the schoolhouse and women starting their own businesses and doing the handiwork around repairing their homes.

The Canadian tongue-in-cheek humour that we inherited from out British forefathers is quite entertaining, with sass peppered into the female and male characters alike. I am so glad that a show like this has been renewed for a 4th season when feel-good television in the same genre barely makes it past the 2nd.

If you’re looking for a feel-good series about life on the Western Frontier, this is the show for you. The plot is rich, the acting commendable, the setting quite elaborate and the themes totally worth your time. I just might invest in the entire series on DVD for myself! With 10 episodes per season, each episode running about 42 minutes (without ads), the first two seasons of the show are available on Netflix and the CBC TV app, if you’re in Canada. The show usually airs on the Hallmark Channel in the U.S. and on Super Channel here in Canada, with the 4th season premiering sometime in February, 2017. If you decide to watch this show, let me know what you think in the comment section. You can catch a CBC preview here:When Calls the Heart CBC Preview

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Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

Rating: 3.5/5.0

The English Patient was not specifically one of those book that I planned to read and finally got around to. I just happened to come upon it on one of my second-hand bookstore adventures. This one is a cute little hole in the wall along Kingston Road at the Beaches in Toronto called The Great Escape Book Store. Canadian author Michael Ondaatje was a familiar enough name, but the book I had not heard of before. So, I paid the requisite “got it for a steal!” price and tucked it away on my shelf for a later read. When I finally got around to it, I was mildly pleased that I had picked it up.

This book  opens in a villa in Italy during the final legs of World War II. Our leading lady is Hana, a Canadian nurse, our leading man it would seem, her English patient. Hana spends her days tending to her patient who is severely burned and confined to a bed. A quarter of the way through this book, Hana is joined by a friend of her father’s, David Caravaggio, a Canadian thief, and about a half of the way into the book, a British sapper for the Allied Forces, Kip (Kirpal Singh). The foursome make a very odd troupe of companions living day-to-day in a mine-infested village.

Ondaatje begins with poetic nuances that captivate the poet within you. He makes fluid the most unnatural comparisons, making you conceded to the validity of his comparisons. His words flow like an elixir of beauty in our brain chemicals. The first third of the book follows through with patchworks of history and fiction loosely following each other, as if chronology and order are the furthest from his mind, his mind caught in a rhapsody of poetic euphoria, of sensual imagery so seductive you are moved to your baser desires for beauty and wonder. There is the dry second third that you will find yourself braving because of an expectation that the final third will be a delivery of enormous mental engagement, and you will not be disappointed. Ondaatje holds his reader captive and then releases the flood of the story, the climax and the suspense, the enigma that is the Enlgish patient and the periphery that are Caravaggio, Hana and Kip.

Being a novice reader of Ondaatje, I was impressed with his level of detail around the intricacies of making and disarming bombs and the life of a Sapper in World War II (a sapper being a mechanical engineer that detected and disarmed bombs, something new I learned as well) among other things. His attention to detail and his ability to weave poetry into his metaphors are indeed praise-worthy. I particularly enjoyed how he appealed to all of my senses in the setup of his metaphors. The final third of the book really opens up to reveal a magnetic storyline that the first two halves have been building towards. At this point the English patient is the enigma that the reader discovers to be more than meets the eye. Hana and Kip revel in their own story as if the rest of the world were suspended in the balance. Caravaggio is the addition to the tale, as if an afterthought necessary to only move along the action so it does not seem too clichéd when Hana or Kip do it.

However, it is not all praise for The English Patient, because the organization of events wracks up a little confusion in its attempt to offer the reader the opportunity to feel intrigued. The second third of the book, as I called “dry” before, made the work wanting in the consistency of aspired greatness. It was a struggle to forge through this section, but as with all my reading, I am committed to finish once I begin, and again with this one I did. Despite winning the Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Award in 1992, I couldn’t find myself agreeing with the respective panels that came to these award decisions. Nevertheless, The English Patient was still a worthwhile read.

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A Memoir by Alan Cumming

I have been a fan of Scotsman, Alan Cumming since the first time I saw him on The Good Wife. His character, Eli Gold, is endearing and a hoot, a combination that Cumming exudes (as I found out) in reality. When I chanced upon his memoir, Not My Father’s Son, I was curious to learn another dimension of him from the one the T.V. world provided. With a flair for the dramatic, perhaps equal parts natural and spurred on by his background in theatre (he has played some fascinating roles!), Cumming narrates some very tense moments in his life.

There were more things I liked about this book than I thought I would. For one, Cumming is an undeniable virtuoso at the way he tweaks language to convey different thoughts. His writing style is more poetry than one might expect, and I was drawn to the way he describes mundane moments and everyday feelings with such creative aplomb. My lexicon was stretched reading words and sentences spun at different geometric angles to think about life patterns in a myriad of ways. Through his writing style, Cumming delivers not just his attraction to the dramatic, but other bits of his personality that you are likely to fall in love with. He is a challenger of the conventional at every turn, and not just with his words, but more so with the minutiae of his actions.

Another reason I liked this book was because Cumming is very candid in his evaluations of his life. I wanted to hug the man as I read his words! Cumming is never bitter, never malicious in his retelling of the pain he suffered as a child. He is loving, kind, and even understanding of his father’s inflicted pain on him, all the while being brave and unaccepting of future attempts to be hurt.

Perhaps the only mild criticism I have of this book is that it read more as an introspection and inspection, than with much attention to its having a readership. At times I found Cumming to be ruminating in things when I willed him to move on. At these moments, I felt a bit ‘stuck’ in my reading and agitated at not being allowed to make inferences of my own. However, I realize that this is a memoir and therefore an expression of Cumming’s rather painful journey to achieving healing, and an audience was not a priority in its making. As a writer myself (a novice one at that), I recognize this need to write for expression and healing. In the same vein, Cumming chose to share his writing on a larger scale to needle out the stigma around suffering the shame and life-destroying effects of domestic violence, as he says “Writing this book and knowing it will be discussed around the world is in some way insurance for me that my story will never be thought of as commonplace, never acceptable…”. And yes, I know that in seeing the other side of the coin, my criticism invalidates itself.

This book provides poignant insights into issues of domestic violence, child abuse, mental health and the effects of war on a person’s psyche. Cumming’s larger-than-life personality is magnetic, and his sentences are poised to capture your every sense.

This book review also (like Shania’s autobiography) does not get a rating, because it is not writing for me to chalk up to a score. If you are a fan of Alan Cumming though, I reckon you’re already looking for a way to get your hands on this book. It will make you love the man even more.

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In Need of a Quick and Easy Remembrance Day Activity?

I was in a crunch for activities to keep my today’s class of grade 2s and 3s occupied, and they were rising on the decibel scale really fast. So, I pulled this tried-and-true solution out of my bag of tricks and got them settled for an entire 30 minutes (I can hear teachers everywhere breathing sighs of relief)!

I wrote the following on the board since tomorrow is Remebrance Day, and handed out lined sheets of paper. I told students to use the letters to make as many words as they could. I made sure to provide examples with the class contributing, packaged it as a challenge of who would find the most words in a half hour, and kicked back.

Then, this happened.

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I hadn’t thought about this activity too much with regard to its actual ability to teach students a lot, but today, with students taking the initiative to use dictionaries, I realized it provides a myriad of applications. For one, students were writing words and then looking for rhyming words to increase their word count, others learned new words with the help of their dictionaries. Still others saw patterns in the words and built up steadily on them (e.g. an, ran, bran).

This simple activity can be applied any day of the week or just for special occasions. You can also choose to do it once a week to allow your students the chance to stretch their linguistic brains. And this is applicable across the grades because all you have to do is increase or decrease the complexity of the word to adjust for knowledge levels. Yes, fellow teachers, there are those rare moments when teaching is a cinch!

 

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Blink: A Look at How We Make Decisions 

Rating: 4.5/5

Psychology has always been a favourite subject of mine. How the human mind works is truly fascinating, and even that is an understatement. Having dabbled in Malcolm Gladwell before, I appreciate his finesse for writing. So, when I had the chance to sink my teeth into Blink, I was excited.

In Blink, Gladwell tackles the rather complex concept of human decision-making. He delivers with succinct detail, thoughtful examples of scenarios where humans have used different pathways to make their decisions. He divides the paths into two: deliberate thinking accompanied by information-gathering, and subconscious ‘gut’ instincts that lead us to ‘just know’. Gladwell is able to make this very multifaceted idea a very accessible one for readers not well-versed in the psychological jargon. In the same breath, he offers even psychology aficionados insights into this very intriguing human mindset. I have a degree in psychology and I was thoroughly enthralled by his various research points and deductions.

One of the many things I genuinely appreciated about this book was the care Gladwell has taken in organizing the material. He begins with scenarios to get you thinking about various connections, and then proceeds to poke at them to break things down so he can piece together the bigger picture, so you can have your “Aha!” moment. In doing so, he conveys his very interesting information in a scaffolding fashion (my fellow teachers will smile here), thereby building on your knowledge throughout the book to create a sound understanding of this topic.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, evidenced by the many notes I made in margins and sticky tags on every other page, for ideas I found worth revisiting at a later date. To anyone who wants to learn more about what influences our decisions, you’ll definitely want to grab this book off a store shelf. I have also, through the reading of this book, begun to pay closer attention to my conscious and unconscious thinking and how each affects my behaviour. If nothing else, I have gained a keener sense of self-awareness, and that in itself is quite a gain.

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Shania Twain’s Autobiography: The Woman in Her

Shania Twain has been the only idol in my life whom I am not related to, or haven’t met and bonded with. My love and deep admiration for this fellow Canadian began at age 12. I was transfixed with her songs when I heard them for the first time. Her lyrics affected me in a way no other artist had done before, because they moved me from deep within to places of comfort and understanding, love, sadness, resilience or uplifting confidence. I can honestly say that over the years, I have reached for one or more of her albums in both happy and rough times to help with my emotions. So, it came as no surprise that when this incredible human being wrote her first book, I HAD TO read it. I always knew though that reading her book would not just be something that I would do because it was the next book on my list. I knew a special time in my life would call for a reading of her words and that special time came this Fall. For a lack of a better word, life has been ‘rough’ over the last few months and when my eyes fell on From This Moment On on my bookshelf where it had taken refuge for a few months, I knew it was time.

Before I jump into my review of her book, I have to share that I have always wanted to see Shania Twain in concert. In fact, that has been on my bucket list since I fell in love with her music. Sadly, she did not do concerts in Canada for a long time and about the Fall of last year (2015), a year when I had somehow gotten so busy with life I forgot to comb newsfeeds for any mention of her touring in Canada, there she was. Now, had I been left to my own devices, this wish would have remained on my bucket list, but that’s where God puts angels in my life, and my amazing baby sister surprised me with tickets to her last concert in Toronto. I cannot explain the emotions I went through when I opened that ticket package from Ticketmaster…my heart exploded inside my chest. I screamed. And I do NOT normally scream. Not only did I see this star of a human being in concert one unforgettable Sunday night, my baby sister (God bless her beautiful heart) bought me tickets so close that I got to touch Shania’s hand! Let me stop here with my recollections of that incredible day…my heart needs a moment to calm down.

Okay, on to her book then. From This Moment On is a painstaking re-enactment of the life that Eileen (Shania’s birth name) has lived. She goes over the most poignant events of her life with such bare-boned honesty that you can’t help but fall in love with who she is as a person. Sometimes, as fans, we admire the artist so much for their onstage persona and their music, and when we have the chance to meet them or get to know a bit about them, we are put off. Somehow the fantasy doesn’t translate to the reality. Not so with Eileen Twain. Eileen is a Canadian right down to the soles of her feet. She is unapologetic for her strong mind and unwavering in her sincerity. She loves hard and she works hard, and at a young age, even though life pushes her to the ground and gives her a good beating, she gets back up and fights for one more round. The raw emotion that seeps through this book left me gasping (literally). There were moments when the emotion was so great I had to put the book down. Perhaps because I was drawing emotional lines to my own feelings, but Eileen is able to surpass the restrictions of censorship and deliver her voice and her heart to her readers with no apologies. There is no pretense. At times it feels as if you are sitting in a Tim Horton’s coffee shop and chatting away with this deeply moving human being. Her words are laced with humour through the mess of her childhood, they are heaped with wisdom (but in a completely non-preachy and humbling-epiphany kind of way) through the heartbreak of her adolescent and young adult years. And through her wisdom and humour, she equips her reader with the ability to understand his/her own emotional intelligence through the lens of experiencing and overcoming pain.

Themes of domestic violence and physical abuse are threaded through the pages. Moments of blinding clarity offered through Eileen’s incredibly wise and forgiving heart bring into full view the messiness of our existence and how we navigate through it the best we can. Family, friendship, poverty, isolation, fear, betrayal, Indigenous relationships, and love are some of the profound concepts that feature throughout this book. Eileen does not talk down to her audience, no, she explains with enough brevity to give you an understanding of the technical elements (the music industry in Nashville, her job as a tree planter) she is narrating, but not too much as to bore you and make you feel stupid.

Eileen shares her deep connection with her family even though the various needles of life try to pick them apart from each other. She talks about her childhood winters in Canada and how her way of life did (and did not) prepare her for a life of fame and fortune. Throughout the book, her small-town humility and conservative-ness shine through. Her in-your-face honesty allows her readers to see her at her most vulnerable and know a bit more about the woman behind the sassy lyrics and skip-to-the-beat rhythm.

I fell in love with Shania Twain all over again after I read her words. I now see her, apart from her on-stage person of Shania Twain, as Eileen Twain too, a woman of undeniable courage and wisdom, a woman capable of forgiving and loving, a woman not without her own faults and insecurities, but a woman who is strong and beautiful on the inside and outside. Most of all though, this book gave me the insight into quite a few life situations that only a thing like someone else’s experience (barring your own) can equip you with. A long read at 400 pages, this is definitely worth the time. You will cry at moments and then you will find yourself chuckling in the very same breath. Such a voice as honest and vulnerable as Eileen Twain’s, I have yet to find within the pages of a book.

I shall not give this book a rating out of 5, I will say though, that if you are a fan, this is ESSENTIAL reading. And, if you are not a fan, well, you just might become one after you read this.

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Once a Student, Now a Teacher.

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This past week I returned, as a teacher, to a place that was a second home during my teen years. A lot of us have either positive or negative experiences of high school. I was blessed to have enjoyed the former. Now, at the beginning of high school, I was shy (yes, in some ways I still am!), and it was anxiety-provoking (and outright painful at times) to come out of my comfort zone. For us introverts, life is a very different playing field, dear extroverted colleagues. I digress, my first years at high school saw me nose-deep in my books and my grades proved it, but with time, I realized I wanted to make more of my high school years (coincidentally, this is around the time I watched the Dead Poet’s Society – awesome movie – and my concept of Carpe Diem began to take shape), and pushing myself to go out of my comfort zone was the way.

Now, during all this time there were a handful of teachers who made it all possible. To any student who has been touched by a teacher to see him/herself in a more positive light, you can relate to what I am about to say. Teachers are in a very unique position to impress positively upon a student. This impression, often unbeknownst to the teacher, can change the course of that student’s life for the better. I had some very special teachers who did this for me.

The first was my English teacher. I will not name her, but if she’s reading this, she knows who she is. She was a tough one (still is), and students often did not receive well her need to push them to be better versions of themselves. I love English (hold your tongue before you call me a nerd!), and her tough-on-you take to teaching, suited me just fine. I viewed it as a challenge to push myself to be a better writer, a better reader, a better student. And that’s how it came to be. This wonderful lady showed me that I had the potential to write well, and she helped me pursue it by giving me the confidence in myself. She took the time to help me tap into a talent that lay dormant just below the surface. She would be the reason I would go on to pursue English as one of my majors in university.

My Careers teacher was similar. Although, he took a different approach to teaching. He was kind, and listened, and seemed to really understand you. He nudged the potential within you gently. His belief in my abilities led me to a leadership camp at 15, a camp that unlocked a lot of what I did not know I had in me. He believed in me before I knew how to believe in myself.

My next two teachers were coaches on my cross country team. One was my French teacher, the other my Biology teacher. Both men were kind and easy to get along with. Our team each year loved them. I remember the first year I tried out for the cross country team and was not able to join for a reason I can no longer remember, my French teacher looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s too bad, because you have what it takes”. Those words were enough. I came back the next year and I raced with my team, and I went on to come back a second year and run the races of my life after spending an entire summer practicing. For my final year, both my coaches recognized my efforts and blessed me with an award.

When I look back at these high school teachers (and there are more teachers from my elementary years), I realize that they all have one thing in common: they went beyond their paycheque-worthy job descriptions. They actually got involved in their students’ lives on a deeper level that allowed them to affect change for the better. They all believed in me and the other students entrusted in their care. And as I continue my teaching career (still in its infantile stages), I am reminded of where my true north lies…always for the students, always for their best.

 

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Let’s Live with Gratitude, Dear World.

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This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and having been deeply moved by the sermon at mass this morning, I found myself moving towards a post to share the same.

The sermon focused, rather aptly, on the spirit of gratitude. The priest began by sharing his own experiences of complaining about things in life when they don’t go his way. He acknowledged that as human beings we are prone to ingratitude and feelings of entitlement that lead us to believe that comfort and good things are due to us. As a result, when they don’t come our way as expected, we do not know how to react, cue an attitude of ingratitude. He emphasized that with such an attitude, it is impossible to live a fulfilling life. The cure he said? Switching out an attitude of ingratitude for one of gratitude. And how right he is. Being grateful for the positive in our lives and recognizing the value in the negative to help us grow, leads us to living joyful lives. Instead of whining about what is going wrong, why not think about all the things that went right? To keep with this spirit of spreading the message of leading a life of gratitude, I looked up (on Google IMAGES) a number of quotes, and a plethora of them is what I found. I am sharing some in this post because I think being grateful is something that may not come naturally to a lot of us, but it is something worth practicing everyday until it is natural. Being grateful will improve our quality of life. After all, it is only a matter of a change in perspective, a worthwhile investment that yields BIG dividends.

Ponder these then. They are beautiful.

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P.S. To my readers all over the world, I thank you for visiting my humble website. If not for your loyalty, I wouldn’t post the things I do. XO.

 

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Homemade Ramen Anyone?

So, today has been a catch-up and get ‘er done day. And what do I do to make it one that counts? I make me some Ramen!

If it isn’t evident how much I love Ramen, it soon will be with all the exclamation points I use!!!!!! This bowl was easy enough to make and I let it sit for a while so the noodles could soak in my broth. It wasn’t the healthiest option, but Fridays are cheat days and I will be breaking a sweat with a 6K run tonight, so there is no guilt in the ingredients!

Ingredients

A handful of frozen veggies (peas, carrots and corn)
1  packet of Ramen noodles (any will do)
1 sausage (or other meat of your choice)
1 egg
Soy sauce
Chilli sauce
2 cups water

Method

Pour the water into a pot and leave to boil. When water is boiling, add the noodles. When noodles are al dente, add frozen veggies and chopped up sausage. Allow all the ingredients in the water to soften, then crack an egg (whole) into the broth. Add soy sauce and chilli sauce as desired. Gently stir the broth being careful not to break the egg. When the broth is a bit thicker than the consistency of water, take the pot off the heat. Serve in a bowl and leave to cool so you don’t burn your tongue with impatience! 🙂

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