Author Archives: Alison

Colony Daze

I have just spent the better part of 2 weeks at a writer’s colony, first time ever. It was bliss. Fairly productive bliss, at that. The colony (supported by the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild) is at a Baptist camp on the shores of Christopher Lake, about 2.5 h on the bus (total – it took me 4 hours to get there) north of Saskatoon, and a whole climactic zone away. We discovered this when in my lone foray into civilization (internet hookup at Prince Albert public library) I read a weather forecast that predicted 27 C for Saskatoon on a day that turned out to be one of our wettest if not our coldest. The lake is in camp and cottage country, surrounded by mid-boreal forest (poplar, spruce). The sky is immense, and very changeable. We had all 4 seasons, with the exception of snow, but I think the quarter inch of hail that thundered down (tin roofs) in all of 10 minutes and left all surfaces coated with white might be a adequate substitute. A couple of warm days, followed by cool and rainy, cool and misty and overcast, cool and misty and clearing, windy, changeable, with thunderstorm, more rain, and finally, on my last day, frost and autumnal mist. At 8 am that last morning I was standing on the side of a lake watching the mist burn off and 5 Canada geese swim away across the glassy water. At 5 pm I was coming into Victoria after a flight that went from Saskatoon to Calgary, Calgary to Kelowna, Kelowna to Calgary, with the same recitation in English and French at each stop and a screaming infant from Kelowna on. The only thing that stopped me climbing on the plane to go back was the thought of climbing on the plane to go back.

The camp consists of a lodge, which had rooms downstairs and lounge and dining room upstairs, a retreat, which was someone’s too-small country house, so they gifted it to the retreat (sliding it down the frozen lake to do so), and assorted cabins distinguished by years of camp-kid grime and a density of bunk beds that was surreal and unnerving. I was originally assigned one of those (the possibility of a cabin of my own had been one of the things that attracted me, as well as going somewhere I hadn’t gone before, and putting distance between me and all the clutter and distractions of home) and backed out as soon as I saw it, moving into the retreat. The cabin also had no plumbing and I would almost certainly have had a close encounter of the ursine kind on my way to the loos early one morning. We had a bear and cub very much in evidence, never seen, but leaving tracks, droppings, and most notably, the carcass of a mature deer by our docks, thought to have been pulled down as it climbed out from swimming across the lake. Much discussion about whether the fox coming to feed was a black fox or a silver fox, and whether the two were one and the same. There was also a cougar somewhere in the woods, and the camp super reassuringly relayed to us the information from the park ranger who came to collect the carcass that when we were out on the trails around the camp, we were probably being watched. People became less enthusiastic about tramping the trails as time went on.

There was nothing nasty in the lake, although it was bitterly cold after a cool, wet winter, and only the hardy went swimming – and then compared their hypothermic symptoms thereafter. I ventured in 3 times, for about 5 minutes apiece (after at least that long actually getting to the point of immersion – the cold bypassed the skin and went straight to the muscles, creating a deep, visceral cramp). The camp had several aluminium canoes, 17 footers, and a bit of a handful for an inexperienced canoeist, as I discovered fairly early on when I found myself in danger of being marooned on the far side of the lake (probably 1000 yards or so, really) because I couldn’t keep the canoe turned into the wind to paddle back. I eventually solved that problem by towing it through the shallows to the closest point, climbing into the front, and just paddling doggedly across the lake, alternating counts of strokes and curses; I hope the boat was not a Baptist. A few times I went out with other people, much easier. One of the colonists had also brought with her a very nice wooden kayak, made by her husband. She was not a morning person, was never seen before 10 am, so she let me take it out in the mornings. So one morning I found myself sitting on a lake as the morning mist cleared, listening to the echo of the loon’s cry mapping out the lake around me.

Work, oh yes, work. We had silent working hours from 9 am to 5 pm (with the exception of one hour for lunch) during which we were not only permitted but required to ignore each others’ existence. Nothing better for a writer, for whom the threat of interruption can be crippling. Breaking deep concentration on a scene can be nearly painful. On the first day various people deployed themselves to various sunny spots with notebooks, but as the weather deteriorated, we tended to keep to our rooms. Meals were laid on, communal, in the lodge, breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 12, dinner at 6 pm; corn, chicken and macaroons (oh those macaroons) to die for. We ate at 2 large round tables, those of us who showed up for meals. Some people were seldom seen outside happy hour (5 pm, in the one cabin we were allowed to have alcohol in). Others, like myself, were never seen at happy hour. I think there were only 2 people from outside Saskatchewan, and many of the colonists had been coming to these retreats for years. I had no sense of having to break into a closed circle; I just found myself on the periphery of a large, loose network of people who house-sat for each other, minded each other’s pets and knew each other’s stories from colony to colony; given time, I too will work myself into the collective lore! I am already plotting to go back next year. Writers predominated. First week there was a painter and a photographer, and second week, 2 more painters arrived. The visual artists occupied a huge fabric walled studio that looked like the full-grown offspring of a tent and a quonset hut, being was large enough to have a garage-sized roll-up door in the end. Sides and wall were translucent and we were given to understand the light on fine days was like daylight – but no one was allowed in there except on the artists’ say so. We had no internet, no phone, there was a TV in the retreat house but it was never turned on, and while the occasional newspaper floated through, it was usually 2 days old and local. Evenings, when not writing, those of us in the retreat worked on a communal jigsaw puzzle. We had done three and a half by the time I had to leave, 2 days early, to get back to do a presentation at work. Didn’t finish the book; did start making progress again, which I am going to have to fight to maintain, since I spent most of this evening summarizing presentations from a conference I attended just before going to the colony.

Stories, Statistics and Survival

From the British Medical Journal Christmas issue, a fine article by Thomas B Newman on the power of stories over statistics when stories are tragic and powerfully told and statistics are predictive but just not predictive enough to tell one the absolutely right thing to do in the unique situation. As the expert, the writer-of-guidelines, he reflects on his experience …

Ironically, the more of an expert on the evidence I have become, the more difficulty I have practising according to that evidence. This is because becoming a “jaundice expert” means becoming familiar with rare but tragic stories of children with kernicterus. These stories are so powerful that it is hard to keep them from trumping other evidence in determining practice.

The Lancet has recently produced a supplement on the subject of Extreme Medicine, containing a grab-bag of articles on medicine and physiology in hostile physical environments, medicine and psychology in times of threat, war and disease outbreak, and James Thompson’s dry and informed commentary on the subject of “Surviving a Disaster” …

Survival of extreme conditions involves many factors, some of them seemingly random … And yet, there is a fascination with the character of the survivor. We are reluctant to believe that their survival was random, and we seek a moral purpose, a redeeming virtue, or an easily applicable psychological trick that we can use in our own more humdrum lives.

… It is rarely a survival advantage to be well behaved. Compliant well-mannered people, awaiting instructions on what to do, often burn passively when a rush to the door could have got them out of the plane … What journalists describe as panic is usually a sensible flight from danger, a useful survival instinct only worth curbing in the special case of a confined space with a small exit … Gawping at an entertaining disaster is usually more common and more dangerous than panic, and the real challenge is to make bystanders recognise danger and run away.

Classic politics

The BBC Classic Serial is broadcasting 3 plays based upon Suetonius’ Lives of the Cesars. The first 2 are currently available on their website. The first covers a clandestine meeting between Gaius Julius Cesar, Governer of Gaul, Cicero and Cato, in which they attempt to hash out their differences to let Cesar return to Rome without either being arrested or invading; also present, and inadvertantly key, are Cesar’s daughter Julia, married to another, absent factor in the equation, the general Pompey, and Tulia, Cicero’s daughter (Julia and Tulia may be historically accurate names, but they’re too close for hearing; it’s a credit to the actresses who played them that from the start there was no confusing the personalities of the high strung Tulia and the forceful Julia who inadvertantly brings about the final schism between Cato and Julius).

The second play takes place after Cesar’s assassination and concerns the survival and rise to power of Cesar’s adopted son, Octavian (later Augustus), 19 years old at his adopted father’s death. Two characters appear of whom I’d formed a strong impression from other works of literature – Livia, Augustus’ wife (can anyone forget Sian Phillips in I, Claudius), and Mark Anthony. Only this is not Shakesphere’s noble Mark Anthony, but a foul-mouthed brute of a Roman general. The BBC attaches a warning of “strong language” – Roman politicians are not delicate in their insults. The latter play reminded me a little of the recent film Elizabeth in the shape of the growth of a young person who, though innately noble, is a survivor more than he is an idealist, and when he finds himself forced to sacrifice principle, uses that sacrifice without apology to his advantage; in the case of the Octavian play, Octavian, who found war repugnant, builds an ordered society in which violence finds its release in the carnage of the arena. A note of warning: if you want to hear the first of these, listen before Saturday, as only two plays are available at one time, and each new play bumps the earlier of the 2 from the site.

Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Here is something I really appreciate, because it was something I set out to do in my earlier days – crystallize an ion channel. Went about it all the wrong way, so never got as far as I might, but somebody did, and now Roderick McKinnon has received the 2003 Nobel prize for Chemistry for a series of gorgeous, elegant experiments that led to a series of revelatory structures of ion channels, including a blow-the-paradigm visualization of the switch that senses changing voltage in voltage-dependent channels. His work is described in a long interview done at the time (1999) he won the Lasker, and also in a series of detailed press-releases put out by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where he works (see the links in the HHMI announcement of his Nobel). For the papers themselves, if you have access to Nature, they have a focus page on Ion Channels: Structure and Function. To someone who has tried expression and crystallization, the sheer physical labor, endless repetitions, and inevitable frustration that can be read between those lines are awe-inspiring. As a historical note, in 1988 Hartmut Michel, Johan Deisenhofer and Robert Huber won the Nobel prize for solving the three dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction center; it was the first membrane protein crystallized.