The Star Thrower

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war. . . Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong. . . Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings. . .

In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud.

“It’s still alive,” I ventured.

“Yes,” he said, and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. It sunk in a burst of spume, and the waters roared once more.

…”There are not many who come this far,” I said, groping in a sudden embarrassment for words. “Do you collect?”

“Only like this,” he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore. “And only for the living.”

He stooped again, oblivious of my curiosity, and skipped another star neatly across the water.

“The stars,” he said, “throw well. One can help them.”

The Star Thrower is part of a sixteen page essay of the same name by Loren Eiseley (1907–1977). It was published in 1969 in The Unexpected Universe. The Star Thrower is also the title of a 1978 anthology of Eiseley’s works (including the essay) which he completed shortly before his death.

Loren Eiseley has been described as the 20th century’s answer to Henry David Thoreau. He writes in a thought-provoking, almost mystical style. He is a naturalist, poet, realist, existentialist, haunted mystic, evolutionary anthropologist, environmental advocate, historian, and human being.

This book is an anthology of his best work, selected from several past publications including some of his poetry. His reflections on humankind, time, evolution, the Earth, the natural world, the unknown, and even the very nature of existence itself are more powerful than the most dense scientific formulae or the most sacred tomes of Scripture. He looks at our mysterious universe with the eyes of a human being, and he looks at his own soul in the process… This is not the work of a theologian or a secularist; these are the stories of a complex human being who admits that there is far more in heaven and earth than we dream.

Review excerpted from Amazon.

Hachiko and the Sawtelle Dogs

Earlier, we wrote about Hachiko, the loyal akita inu revered by the Japanese for his dedication to his master.

Hachiko features in David Wroblewski’s stunning first book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and in this reader’s opinion, contributes to the brilliant sensitivity of the unusual Sawtelle dogs.

In the backwoods of Wisconsin, the Sawtelle family—Gar, Trudy and their young son, Edgar—carry on the family business of breeding and training dogs. These are no ordinary working dogs.

Edgar, born mute, has developed a special relationship and a unique means of communicating with Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, a fictional breed distinguished by personality, temperament and the dogs’ ability to intuit commands and to make decisions.

Raising them is an arduous life, but a satisfying one for the family until Gar’s brother, Claude, a mystifying mixture of charm and menace, arrives. When Gar unexpectedly dies, mute Edgar cannot summon help via the telephone.

His guilt and grief give way to the realization that his father was murdered; the resemblance to Hamlet resonates. After another tragedy, Edgar goes on the run, accompanied by three loyal dogs.

At the heart of the book is a pup from an extremely rare breed, thanks to a family interest in Mendelian genetics; so rare is Almondine, indeed, that she finds ways to communicate with Edgar that no other dog and human have yet worked out. Edgar’s grandfather had a term for dogs like this: canis posterus – “next dogs”.

Edgar may be voiceless, but he is capable of expressing sorrow and rage when his father suddenly dies, and he realizes that his father’s brother, who has been spending a great deal of time with Edgar’s mother, is responsible for the crime.

In one eerie episode during a spring downpour, Edgar is awakened by the barking of the kennel dogs. Going out to investigate, he sees his father’s ghost. Gar’s ghost convinces Edgar that he really does exist by interacting with one of the pups. The pup can clearly sense Edgar’s father and, eventually, so can Edgar.

Edgar’s father makes an enigmatic sign to him: “Find H-A-A”.

Edgar is conflicted: “You’re not real. You can’t be real.”

But when Edgar finds a letter to his grandfather from the US Ambassador to Japan, he reads that, while following Hachiko from the train station, the Ambassador felt “…a third presence accompanied us, someone whom only Hachiko could see.”

This had happened before.

Wroblewski comments on the Hachiko link:

I first learned about Hachiko back in the mid-1990s when I was doing early research for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. The more I read, the more amazed I became, if only because I’d never heard of Hachiko before. I decided to find a way to include him, somehow, in the story. And so the basic facts of Hachiko’s life (that he accompanied his owner, Professor Ueno, to the Shibuya train station in Tokyo each day, and met him there again each afternoon; that Professor Ueno died suddenly at the university; that Hachiko continued to come to the train station to greet his master for years afterward; that a statue in the dog’s honor was erected at the station even while he was still alive) are suggested in some of the letters Edgar finds, though I embroidered upon those events to tie them to Edgar’s immediate predicament.

I didn’t mention that Hachiko was an Akita only because it didn’t seem important for the story—John Sawtelle drew on many breeds to create the Sawtelle dogs, and what was significant was Hachiko’s astonishing devotion, not his breed credentials. That, and the fact that John Sawtelle was sly and inventive enough to somehow wrangle a puppy from Hachiko’s bloodline after reading about his situation in a newspaper.

By the way, 2008 has been a great year for Hachiko devotees. Besides his appearance in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Hachiko is mentioned in Martha Sherrill’s superb book Dog Man, a biography of the man credited with rescuing the Akita breed from extinction after World War II. Hachiko is also the subject of a forthcoming motion picture, Hachiko: A Dog’s Story, directed by Lasse Halström and starring Richard Gere and Joan Allen.

An interesting twist to the Sawtelle story is that Edgar shares the traits of the marvellous dogs. He cannot speak, he sees ghosts, and he communicates by signs. He is loyal, but he chooses to run away and make it on his own by foraging and stealing, it is as alpha of his own pack.

Note to David Wroblewski: Those of us who share our lives with the Japanese spitz already know about canis posterus. Shhh. It’s our little secret…

Hachikō Waits

Hachikō Waits is a children’s book, written by Lesléa Newman and illustrated by Machiyo Kodaira. It uses the true story of Hachikō the Akita dog from Japan and adds Yasuo, a young boy, to the story. It won the ASPCA Children’s Book Honor in 2004

Hachikō (November 10, 1923–March 8, 1935), known in Japanese as chūken Hachikō (“faithful dog Hachikō”), was born in the city of Odate, Akita Prefecture, and remembered for his loyalty to his master.

In 1924, Hachikō was brought to Tokyo by his owner, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. During his owner’s life Hachikō saw him off from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station.

What a good dog you are. What a fine dog you are. Hachi, you are the best dog in all of Japan.

Professor Ueno speaks these words to his faithful dog before boarding the train every morning. And every afternoon, Hachiko returns to the train station to greet his master.

The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno didn’t return on the usual train one evening. The professor had suffered a stroke at the university that day. He died and never returned to the train station where his friend was waiting.

Hachikō was given away after his master’s death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachikō apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachikō waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he didn’t see his friend among the commuters at the station.

Hachikō was a permanent fixture at the train station, and he attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachikō and Professor Ueno together each day. Realizing that Hachikō waited in vigil for his dead master, their hearts were touched. They brought Hachikō treats and food to nourish him during his wait.

This continued for 10 years, with Hachikō appearing only in the evening time, precisely when the train was due at the station.

That same year, another of Ueno’s former students (who had become something of an expert on the Akita breed) saw the dog at the station and followed him to the Kobayashi home where he learned the history of Hachikō’s life. Shortly after this meeting, the former student published a documented census of Akitas in Japan. His research found only 30 purebred Akitas remaining, including Hachikō from Shibuya Station.

Professor Ueno’s former student returned frequently to visit the dog and over the years published several articles about Hachikō’s remarkable loyalty. In 1932 one of these articles, published in Tokyo’s largest newspaper, threw the dog into the national spotlight.

Hachikō became a national sensation. His faithfulness to his master’s memory impressed the people of Japan as a spirit of family loyalty all should strive to achieve. Teachers and parents used Hachikō’s vigil as an example for children to follow. A well-known Japanese artist rendered a sculpture of the dog, and throughout the country a new awareness of the Akita breed grew.

Hachikō Waits official website

The Secret of the Nutcracker

Visions of sugar plum fairies will dance in your head as The Secret of the Nutcracker, a new spin on the classic tale, comes to life.

The film is loosely base on E.T.A. Hoffman’s Nussknacker und Mausekönig which inspired Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker.

It features the talented Brian Cox as Drosselmeyer, and introduces Janelle Jorde as Clara. This delightful Christmas tale tells the story of 12 year-old Clara’s mystical journey on Christmas Eve to find her father in a World War II German Prisoner of War camp. She receives unexpected help from the mysterious Drosselmeyer who befriends Clara and encourages her to believe that she can create magic.

The Secret of The Nutcracker is directed by Eric Till and features the music of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and John Estacio, performed by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. Four exquisite dance spectacles by the renowned Alberta Ballet are woven throughout to create Clara’s fantasy dream world.

There is a spectacular ballroom sequence with dancers in Venetian bird masks and costumes in all colours of the rainbow. Drosselmeyer doubles as a wise owl with glowing golden eyes, and he travels with an amusing flock of Swiss Guard crows.

Clara lives with her mother and two younger brothers in rural Alberta in 1943 while her father is a POW in Germany. This classic tale is seamlessly interwoven throughout with references to the Second World War and the Nazi internment camps.

The Secret of the Nutcracker begins a scene of the boys in the wood, sent to bring home a tree on Christmas Eve. They are startled by strange rustling noises, and they run home as quickly as they can.

The woods and the deserted road are ominous, and the shadowy figures that flash through the trees are reminiscent of the Nazi threat. We see Clara reflected in the golden eye of an owl, and there is a pervasive sense of being watched. In one of Clara’s frightening dreams, the Nazi menace appears as large black rat/bear creatures that imprison her mother and brothers in the trees.

In another, brighter dream, Clara visits her father with the help of Drosselmeyer, and gives him the gift of hope.

And yes, here’s the spoiler: Clara’s dad comes home at the end of the war, and there’s a quintessential Canadian scene of him running up the road through the snow to Clara, her brothers and their mother.

Video excerpts at Joe Media

You can get your very own copy of this award-winning film at CBC Shop

Moon and Star

Moon and Star: A Christmas Story is a beautiful and heart-warming picture book for the season by writer and illustrator, Robin Muller.

Moon is a toyshop dog. He is named Moon because he has a moon-shaped mark around his right eye.

“Moon loves all the toys, but secretly he loved one above all the others: a delicate little porcelain cat with a shining star painted on its face. Moon calls the cat Star.”

The shopkeeper tells Moon that all the toys go to the child who will love them the most, so Moon is sure that Star will be his on Christmas day. Moon loves Star so much that, every night, he takes Star to his mat and curls up beside her as he sleeps.

On Christmas Eve, a rich woman buys Star, and Moon is heartbroken.

Moon follows the woman home, and finds that she has given Star to her ungrateful grandson. The spoiled child throws Star against the wall and shatters her into pieces.

A housemaid sweeps Star’s pieces into a little box and tosses the box onto a rubbish heap outside. Moon collects the box with a heavy heart.

But this season is a time of miracles. That night, an angel visits Moon and he discovers that magical and wondrous things are possible.

War Horse Puppet Theatre

Many audience members weep openly. When the play reaches its moving climax, it sends them to their feet in rapturous applause.

In the somewhat blasé world of London theatre-going, this kind of emotional empathy with what’s happening onstage is a rarity. And when puppetry is involved, one might imagine further barriers to connecting viscerally to what in essence is a battlefield horror story.

But War Horse – the latest jewel in the crown of Britain’s National Theatre – is a horror story with heart. It’s a brilliantly realized stage version of Michael Morpurgo’s acclaimed novel about a Devonshire farm horse named Joey who is sold to the cavalry and thrown into the carnage of the First World War. There, after suffering dreadful ordeals, he ends up reunited with the humble farm boy who has enlisted at the age of 16 with one goal in mind: to find the beloved animal from whom he has been parted.

But it’s not just another tenderly wrought story of a boy and his animal. It is also a searing examination of an almost forgotten chapter from the First World War.

When you watch the lacerating scene where members of the cavalry are mowed down by the Germans’ mechanical might, you can’t help but recall the idiotic assertion by the British military establishment that the machine gun had no stopping power against the horse. The grisly truth is that between the years 1914 and 1918, a million horses were sent across the English Channel to France – and only 62,000 returned. War Horse tells us what it was like for them.

They were used as cavalry horses, for pulling guns and ambulances; in the battlefields of the Western Front they were essential to the armies on both sides. I discovered also that at the end of the war most of our surviving horses were sold off to French butchers. Here was a strong story, I felt, the story of how it was to be a horse in the First World War.

And so I wrote War Horse, like most of my novels a book that is as much for adults as for children. Now, 25 years later, War Horse has been turned into a play at the National Theatre. It would be difficult to imagine a production of greater ambition and complexity.

The puppetry miracles are wrought by South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company. There’s a touch of the abstract in these awesome, larger-than-life creatures whose components include a flexible bamboo framework, translucent skin and the brilliant manipulations of teams of puppeteers – yet they emerge as intensely real, both physically and emotionally, in the toss of a mane or the pricking of the ears or in the basic flexing of the loins in preparation for a charge.

Other puppet imagery also emerges, ranging from the comical – in the form of a cranky farmyard goose – to the horrific – in the moment when a carrion crow descends on a dying horse.

This is an astounding production with emotional resonance, performed by an exceptional company of actors.

Full review at National Post.

Michael Morpurgo website

Images from the production

Thinking Like A Mountain

Aldo Leopold (1887 – 1948) was an American ecologist, forester and environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness preservation. He has been called an American prophet, the father of wildlife management, and one of most strongest advocates for conservation.

Thinking Like a Mountain , by Susan Flader, professor of environmental history and policy at the University of Missouri, was the first of a handful of efforts to capture the work and thought of America’s most significant environmental thinker, Aldo Leopold. This account of Leopold’s philosophical journey makes brings much-deserved attention to the continuing influence and importance of Leopold today.

Thinking Like a Mountain unfolds with Flader’s close analysis of Leopold’s essay of the same title, which explores issues of predation by studying the interrelationships between deer, wolves, and forests. Flader shows how his approach to wildlife management and species preservation evolved from his experiences restoring the deer population in the Southwestern United States, his study of the German system of forest and wildlife management, and his efforts to combat the overpopulation of deer in Wisconsin. His own intellectual development parallels the formation of the conservation movement, reflecting his struggle to understand the relationship between the land and its human and animal inhabitants.

Drawing from the entire corpus of Leopold’s works, including published and unpublished writing, correspondence, field notes, and journals, Flader places Leopold in his historical context. In addition, a biographical sketch draws on personal interviews with family, friends, and colleagues to illuminate his many roles as scientist, philosopher, citizen, policy maker, and teacher. Flader’s insight and profound appreciation of the issues make Thinking Like a Mountain a standard source for readers interested in Leopold scholarship and the development of ecology and conservation in the twentieth century.

“My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.”

Aldo Leopold Archives

Water for Elephants

Today’s Globe & Mail ran a little piece on The Long Summer of the Carny.

The carnival workers of Conklin Supershows don’t see the big-city glam of the CNE or the PNE. From April to October, they travel small towns, setting up shopping mall midways and county fairs. It’s a fading way of life with few rewards.

A few weeks ago, they had set up a sad little show in the nearly empty parking lot of the East York Towne Centre, with rides for the kiddies, a couple of bored elephants shuffling back and forth under an awning in the July heat, and some small performing dogs racing back and forth in an enclosure.

I was reminded of Sara Gruen’s wonderful book, Water for Elephants, which is a must-read for anyone who is fascinated by the circus, elephants, or the Depression-era hobo life.

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie.

It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

After Jacob puts Silver Star down, August talks with him about the reality of the circus. “The whole thing’s illusion, Jacob,” he says, “and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what people want from us. It’s what they expect”

Dave Weich of Powell’s Books interviewed the author. An excerpt of the interview:

DW: Is it true that you’d never been to a circus before starting your research for Water for Elephants?

Sara Gruen: It’s true. I had no history whatsoever. No interest, no connection to anyone associated with the circus. I grew up in northern Ontario. I don’t know if they didn’t come up that far or if I just never went, but if I did go it made such a little impression on me that I didn’t remember it.

DW: What wound up being your favorite act?

SG: In the end, the liberty horses… A person, usually a beautiful woman, comes out with a group of twelve horses typically, sometimes all white, sometimes black and white. She stands and makes signals with whips in the air, and she talks to them, and they obey her.
I have a horse, and I think it’s very cool that they can get horses doing that with no restraint and no halter.

DW: Marlena is that woman in Water for Elephants.

SG: Yes, and in fact I modeled her act after ones I had watched.

DW: And Rosie was based on a real elephant?

SG: Several elephants, yes. There was actually an elephant that would pull her stake out of the ground to go and steal lemonade, and then she’d go back and put her stake back in the ground and look innocent while they blamed the roustabouts.

DW: One of my favorite details in the book, having nothing to do with the circus, describes the boys in the hobo jungle: when they sleep, they take off their shoes but tie them to their feet. How did you educate yourself in Depression-era America?

SG: I wasn’t quite sure at first that this was the era I’d set the story in. A circus photo set me off on the path of the novel, but then I got on a sidetrack about hobos and I realized that something like 80 percent of them were under twenty-one. You think about hobos and you imagine middle-aged, dirty men by the side of the track, but no, they were kids.

DW: So much happens on the train or just off the train. It’s the book’s main setting.

SG: The whole of a circus worker’s social life happened on a moving train. When they were off, they were setting up or they were performing or they were tearing down, so everything happened while they were moving. Once they collected your quarter, they did their act and then they got out. You were leaving by the front end of the tent, and they were hauling the benches out by the back end—they’re done, they’re finished, they want to get on the train.

SG: For Water for Elephants, which was the first historical thing I’ve written, I did all the research ahead of time. I needed to feel that I knew the subject matter in and out. I hate outlining. I hate outlines, hate them, hate them. I usually know what the crisis of the book is going to be, though I don’t know how I’m going to get there. I try to make it bad enough that I don’t know how I’m going to get out of it. And when I get there, I have to get out of it. I just get myself geared up, and I write every day and see what happens.

DW: Has your technical-writing background helped, or has it been a hindrance?

SG: It was great training. For one thing, it taught me to sit down and write for eight hours a day. For another, it taught me not to take personally editorial comments. The first instructional project I gave to an editor ten years ago came back covered in red. I was practically in tears. It has to be a thousand times worse if it’s a piece of fiction, but I don’t take it personally anymore.

DW: Did you get up close and personal to elephants in your research?

SG: At the Kansas City Zoo, I observed the elephants with their ex-handler for a couple of days, taking notes on body language and behavior. I got into the habit of walking up to elephant handlers at the circus and saying, “Hi. I’m writing a book. May I meet your elephant?” I got lucky twice. The first time was right after I’d been out with this elephant handler at the Kansas City Zoo who had been gored by an elephant. He took a tusk through the thigh, one through the rib cage, which just missed everything vital, and another through his upper arm. So I still had that in mind. I was standing beside this huge thing with his amber eye staring down at me.

The guy said, “Go ahead. You can touch her.” I was shaking, but I touched her. I said, “Okay, I’m done now.” Several months later, I met the second one. It was one of these little circuses that throws a tent up and says, “Free tickets!” And then it’s twenty-dollar popcorn. I snuck out of the big top because it was small and pretty cheesy, but during the show I asked to meet the elephant; the handler gave me a bucket of peanuts and stuck me in an enclosure with this thing. He shut the gate. I was alone with this African elephant. I was looking at her, and she was looking at me like, This is not part of the usual repertoire. So I fed her the peanuts. By the end of it, she was such a love bug. I was hugging her and kissing her, posing for photos. She gave me a kiss, a big, sock puppet, mushy elephant kiss with the end of her trunk. It was really memorable.

Sara Gruen’s website

Elizabeth Judd’s review at the International Herald-Tribune

All Our Wonder Unavenged

Don Domanski was born and raised on Cape Breton Island and now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His latest work, All Our Wonder Unavenged (Brick Books) recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.

He is a poet of the holiness of subtleties, a master of mindfulness and being. His writing is a form of osmosis, spirit seeping through the details of each poem, creating a marvel of metaphysics and language distilled to purest energy. Living in the moment here is synonymous with being the moment, a transformation that is stunning to inhabit.

The nature imagery is interlaced with references to Buddhism, Greek mythology, ancient civilizations and even witches. The poems don’t transcend the material world so much as find the spirit in what we can see, touch, and hear. Domanski asserts that the deity is in all things.

my mother believed God moved the sparrows around day after day
as a teenager I believed the sparrows moved God around
all the inexhaustible crutches He leaned upon
all the underweights of silence to find His way

now the only god I believe in are the sparrows themselves

Don Domanski was recently interviewed by CBC. Here are some excerpts.

CBC: Your work brings the inanimate to life. What draws you to blur the line between the animate and inanimate world?

It probably comes from childhood originally, children blur that line all the time, giving life to inanimate objects, to toys and dolls, because they can’t imagine it otherwise. What I’m doing is making my way to presence, and blurring that line helps to draw out the inherent presence in things. My definition of life is isness, its elementary stance and grace, therefore everything is alive, simply put being equals life. Now I know this isn’t the usual definition, but still it is an ancient one, not just among children, but among people from all cultures.

I’m an animist when it comes to how I interact with the physical world. Animism is the oldest religious/spiritual practice, the base experience out of which all the other ways of the sacred have grown. So I guess you could say I’m a traditionalist of a sort, a basic believer in first experiences, whether it’s cultural or ones from childhood. There’s a very deep truth there that strikes well below the thinking level, a connection richer than language, which can give words a more inclusive depth and reach.

CBC: What draws you to geology and palaeontology as subjects for your writing?

I’ve always been interested in the natural sciences, so it seems almost instinctive that geology and palaeontology should find their way into my work. I collected fossils for fourteen years, to try and get some sense of time, some understanding of the permutations of time on life. Of course in the end it’s time out of mind, it’s impossible to grasp what two hundred million years actually means. But there were moments in this hunt for time that shone forth with a particular light I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. For instance, finding the impressions of raindrops that were three hundred and fifty million years old. The rain falling on a completely different planet then we live on today. That gives a new perspective, a new appreciation of being.

I see no difference between poetry and spiritual practice

CBC Interview with Don Domanski

Brick Books

Prairie Fire Review of Books

Jasper’s Day

Jasper is still sleeping when I wake up. He sleeps a lot these days. He’s sprawled out, taking up half the bed like he always does. I nudge him gently with my foot, but he keeps dozing. That’s okay. He can sleep in. Today is his day.

Today we are celebrating Jasper’s Day. It was my idea. Mom and Dad are staying home from work. I’m staying home from school. Everything we do will be in honour of Jasper – sort of like a birthday. But it isn’t Jasper’s birthday, and I tell myself not to think about what day it really is.

Riley’s family celebrates Jasper’s last day. In the morning, their beloved Golden Retriever gets his very own serving of his favourite breakfast – scrambled eggs with cheese, and bacon. Riley remembers to bring the camera as he and his family take Jasper out for a ride in the van.

The family drives to Jasper’s favourite stream where he used to swim and fetch sticks when he was more agile. Jasper’s sight and hearing are also failing, and his arthritis makes it difficult for him to move about. After the stream, Riley and his parents stop at The Big Scoop for a treat. Riley’s father orders the “usual” for Jasper and himself – butterscotch ripple. Riley’s father tells the ice-cream shop owner about Jasper, and the man comes out to the van to say good-bye to one of his loyal customers. After the ice cream, the family stops at Riley’s Grandma’s house, and she and her dog, Nikki, bid farewell to Jasper. Along the journey, Riley has taken several photographs of Jasper.

The family returns home, but only Riley and his mother get out of the van. It is time to say goodbye. Riley whispers in Jasper’s ear, “You’re the best dog in the whole world.” Jasper licks Riley’s cheek, and then he and Riley’s father depart. Even though Riley knows that the veterinarian will give Jasper a shot and death will be quick and gentle for Jasper, it is terribly difficult to say goodbye to his beloved dog.

Riley’s father returns home with Jasper’s body wrapped in an arrowhead blanket, and the family buries him in the backyard. They gently place Jasper’s old chew toy, a stick, his water dish and a picture of the family in his grave. The family laughs and cries as they remember Jasper and say their final goodbyes.

That night, the house is empty without Jasper. Riley’s chest aches as he tries to fall asleep. Mom and Dad got Jasper before he was even born; Jasper had always been in his life. Tomorrow will be Riley’s first day without Jasper.

Riley looks at the photograph of himself and Jasper on his nightstand and thinks of all the photographs he took today, he gets the idea to make a memory book of Jasper’s life. He will never forget his friend.

Marjorie Blain Parker’s tender and unsentimental treatment of a child’s dealing with the death of a pet resonates with readers of all ages. The gentle and honest story speaks of lessons about love, acceptance, and remembrance. Janet Wilson’s soft and expressive illustrations are rendered in chalk pastels on coloured paper.

Jasper’s Day won the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award.

A Memory Book for Harry

Recently, a friend in our online community lost her Golden Retriever to an aggressive cancer. The story of Harry and the beautiful memory book that was created for him and his surviving sister Lucy appears on our sister site, Red Star Café. The story includes a YouTube version of the memory book, with a haunting rendition of Into the West by Annie Lennox (from Lord of the Rings). Read the story here.