Chelyabinsk

When I heard about the meteor crash in central Russia I was immediately curious about where it was. Ural Mountains? Okay, I know where those are. Chelyabinsk? Near Kurgan? I went to my map of Russia, and sure enough, it's the same place that I pinpointed years ago. My mom spent a couple of years in a prisoner of war camp there. Helping the Soviets with some major project. It was all quite vague. What she did remember was the hunger, the cold and always, the bugs.

Chelyabinsk. Google it. It's set in a heavily industrialized area. Miserably cold in the winter, just like here in Winnipeg. Mom became the Starosta in her camp barrack--possibly because she could speak both German and Russian. The all-women labour camp had to supply coal for one of the factories there. Chelyabinsk was a major tank and tractor producing facility. It's nickname once was Tankograd. The area is considered the most polluted place on earth. In a Globe and Mail article, a teacher is quoted as saying, "The city is a place where people always seem bitter with one another."

There's another Chelyabinsk. It's hidden underneath the ground and called Chelyabinsk -40.  It was the first Soviet plutonium production complex. Construction for this underground nuclear facility began in 1945. Could my mother have been helping build this complex?

She shared the odd story about her experiences. It's where she learned to kill a crow with a stone so that she'd have some meat to eat. It's where she lost all her hair from some herbal remedy she took when she was sick. It's where she watched a friend burn and then roll in the snow, becoming a human ice cube in the process. Mom said, "she went crazy after that." It's where she helped sober up a campguard so that he'd be presentable to his superiors. It's also where Mom spent a memorable Christmas Eve in a freezing cold barn. I'll have to share that poignant story sometime. Chelyabinsk. I finally know how to spell it. I wonder what Mom would say, now that the whole world knows where it is. She'd probably shrug her shoulders. It was a place she wanted to forget.

Mom got to leave Chelyabinsk in 1947. By then she was quite ill and the Soviets figured they'd get no more labour out of her.

This meteor crash just might enlighten the rest of the world about Chelyabink's history.

Remembering Day

Today was once my Uncle August’s birthday. ‘cept he died and stopped counting birthdays. My mom says he came home (Kreuzberg, East Prussia) to visit on his 21^st birthday – November 11, 1943 – and disappeared soon after – missing in action for Hitler’s lost cause.  I don’t know where he’s buried. Somewhere on the Eastern front, I suppose. Thanks to the internet - his name exists - even if his body was never found. Check here for the stats on his birth and death.  His name is listed at a Russian memorial site called Sologubovka - near St. Petersburg. 

I’m baking a Streuselkuchen (crumb cake) today – in August’s memory. 

My friend, Sara, has just published a book, Jimmy Muir from Trois Rivieres, about another young man's war death. He was a fighter pilot  – and was once her mother’s boyfriend. This is a poignant, sad, love story and a well-researched tribute to a young man who was fighting other young men – like my Uncle August.  Jimmy’s buried in Belgium, far from his home. 

Twenty-something and dead. Lives unlived.  I’d like to think that if both had lived, they might have become friends here in Canada where people could start over.

Marsha Skrypuch tagged me in a post and here's my response to her questions about the

Next Big Thing I'm working on.  Check out her blog for her next project. That woman is

amazing. PLUS - she has links to other authors' works-in-progress that sound very interesting!

What is the working title of your book?

Morton Magic

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A twelve-year-old girl goes camping with her boring family and has a

ghostly adventure.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

There’s a place on Lake Winnipeg, near Gimli, that our family liked to visit called Camp Morton.  Back in the 1930s it was a children’s camp and some of the original buildings still stand. So all I had to do was use my imagination, like the protagonist of the story, and the ghost was ready and willing to share. I’m not sure if it works, (my writer insecurity is on high), but I did have a lot of fun imagining this ghostly tale.

What genre does your book fall under?

Middle grade contemporary mystery

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Tough question.  I see so few movies.  The protagonist is the opposite of Hermione (Emma Watson) - and that’s the only kids’ movie I can recall.  A female version of Ron Weasely (Rupert Grint) might work.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Is there no third choice? I’m hoping for a publisher – but am not trying the agent route.

What other books would you compare to within your genre?

I’m thinking maybe Barrie Summy’s I So Don’t Do series. I got to know Barrie when I was a member of the Class of 2k8 – an online marketing group that I had to drop out of when my book was delayed. I read all Barrie’s books. She’s a very funny writer. Light-hearted mystery.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was inspired to write this story because I’d written The Kulak’s Daughter about something that happened in the 1930s in another part of the world, and I was fascinated with the idea of children living here – attending a camp that wasn’t a gulag (labour camp) – and the idea grew from there. Also, my own children (now young adults) inspired the story. Childhood is so fleeting and the story is about how dangerous it can be to hold onto the past.

What else about the book might pique a reader’s interest?

This story is Made-in-Manitoba. There’s much to explore right here.

I’ve just finished a re-write of  Morton Magic from a third-person, to a first-person story. There have definitely been some challenges in doing this, because I have to limit everything to the protagonist’s point of view. No room for an omniscient narrator. I hope it works. Now I’m going to review the story again with a copy of Martha Alderson’s The Plot Whisperer as my guide. I find that book very helpful, because plot is my weak spot.

After this mystery-break, I’m looking forward to applying The Plot Whisperer to my East Prussian Princess – the sequel to The Kulak’s Daughter.  It’s a story very dear to me because it’s fictionalizes my mother’s life.  Morton Magic was just a way to procrastinate.

Thanks again, Marsha, for asking!

Thursday was an almost-blue-moon night. I was at a soccer game on the outskirts of town and got to watch the lunar rock slowly change from a pale white to a shiny silver. The more the sun faded, the brighter the moon became. It was quite the show.

In between the moon and sun there was me and the dog watching a soccer final.   (Maybe this isn’t quite true. The dog was more into sniffing than watching  And I don’t want to know about those bones I heard him crunching.)  As the sun set in glorious prairie fashion, a swarm of Canada geese, who’d been feasting in a nearby field of recently cut wheat,  rose up into the pink and purple sky.  It was all quite soul-stirring.  Makes me think of this great prairie song.

Throughout all this, of course, is the soccer game. The green team against the blue team, and I guess in the end, on the eve of a blue moon, the blue team had the advantage.

Prairie skies are special places - add a blue moon and it’s quite surreal.

I hear the next blue moon won’t happen until July, 2015. I plan to attend.

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was a gift - not sure I would have picked it up on my own. However, I did enjoy it very much. There was a touch of Marilyn French in there - one of my all time favorite authors.

It's a spiritual book. I found myself copying out the forty rules as a sort of life-guide. It's not meant to be a fast read. Highly recommended.  I'll have to read her other work, too.


View all my reviews

Happy 145, Canada!

Happy 145th birthday, Canada. How grateful I am for the gift of being Canadian - a gift that my parents gave to me. I was born within the first year of their arrival in this country - back in the fifties.  They were newlyweds - both in their mid 30s - both homeless and grateful for the new opportunities that Canada offered. My little parents - each only about five feet tall - were the proudest Canadians around. They loved everything about this country. The freedom, Trudeau's multi-culturalism, the lakes, the fishing, the mountains, the distances,  and the wonderful friends and neighbours they made along the way.

Canada is my home because my parents chose to move and start their new family here. They never took its gracious compassion to the homeless for granted. I hope Canada continues to be a refuge for the homeless - a place with room for families to grow.

I saw the EuroCup Final on TV this afternoon. My kids didn't care to watch because Germany had been eliminated. On the one hand, I think my dad would be proud of that German gene in his grandkids, but on the other hand, he'd have happily watched Spain beat Italy in Kyiv.  A soccer match is so much better than war.