Leeann Minogue

Creepy blog comments

I'm getting an awful lot of spam comments on this blog. At least I hope they're spam comments - if they're serious, there's a lot of people out there who think I need Valium. Or - more worrisome - a Polish snow removal company, UGG boots, and a larger penis.

In other news: as Acting Editor of "Grainews" for the next few months, I'm saving my most interesting comments for the newspaper. You can read digital issues online at www.grainews.ca. Or, heck, go crazy and buy yourself a subscription. (Although, you might not want to get this confused with "Grain" magazine and start sending in poems. 

Book Review - Bone Coulee by Larry Warwaruk

 Saskatchewan writer Larry Warwaruk’s new novel, “Bone Coulee” is a really great read.

 

The plot of Larry Warwaruk’s “Bone Coulee” centers on a heinous crime committed more than sixty years ago. Mac Chorniak, a retired farmer with a passion for Ukrainian poetry, is still haunted by the senseless crime he and friends committed against a young First Nations athlete when they were teenagers. There was no punishment at the time, but Chorniak can’t forget the senseless violence. He doesn’t know that the First Nations woman who’s moved into the house next door was part of the same incident, and has a score to settle.

Throughout the novel, history grates on the present as characters try to decide what should be celebrated and what should be forgotten. The small-town residents stage a celebration to commemorate an old-time wagon trail, but also witness the destruction of the town’s last standing grain elevator. Landowners near Bone Coulee hunt for native arrowheads and display them in their basements, but have few personal relationships with real-life First Nations people. A young First Nations woman whose mother was sent to residential school learns her people’s traditions at university.

As well as a thought-provoking plot, “Bone Coulee” is packed with real small-town conversation. The farming characters in this book say exactly the sorts of things you might hear at the kitchen table in any Saskatchewan farmhouse, including references to both Grant Devine and Tommy Douglas.

With “Bone Coulee”, Larry Warwaruk has created a novel that shows his deep love for and understanding of this place, while bringing to life the uneasy and typically unspoken relationship many Saskatchewan residents have with our history.

 

Buy the book from Coteau Books. 

The Saskatchewan Publisher’s GroupSaskatchewan Publishers Group gave me a copy of this book to write this review. But I had already bought a copy, and would have loved it anyway!

 

The Sort of Day I'm Having.

Best. Gift. Ever.

Last year I posted here about how much I’ve always wanted a Chia pet. I was hoping The Husband would read it and finally take the hint. But Christmas passed. And then my birthday. Still no Chia pet. (Turns out, he didn’t know I had a blog. And now that he knows, he doesn’t really care. Until I figure out how to sneak my Christmas list onto The Combine Forum, I think I can forget about him taking a cyber-hint.)

So I’d given up all hope of ever getting a Chia pet. It’s not the kind of thing you can buy for yourself. I’m sure my mother would rather wear socks with sandals than be caught dead purchasing a Chia pet. And The Boy won’t be old enough for that sort of purchase for years.

Then suddenly, one day this summer when we were having drinks at the cool restaurant, on the deck overlooking the Crematorium (welcome to Weyburn), my friend showed up with a gift bag.

It wasn’t my birthday. Or my anniversary. Yet there is was.

A Statue of Liberty Chia pet. Complete with a battery-operated flame-shaped light on the end of its arm. Not only a Chia pet – a late souvenir from last year’s fantastic trip to New York City.

I can’t post actual photos. Yet. Successfully operating a Chia pet is harder than you might think. I’m on my second crop of alfalfa, and I still haven’t mastered the art of evenly spreading the seeds. My LibertyLady looks like she’s gone to one of those hairdressing schools for a cheap cut. I can’t possibly take her picture until I perfect my crop production technique. But every time I look at the windowsill in my kitchen, I smile like a lunatic.

 

Your Name Is?

The Husband and I went to see a lawyer last week. (No, not a divorce. Just transferring some farm mortgages.) Our banker had sent our documents to a law office we hadn’t used before; we weren’t quite sure which lawyer would be helping us.

The receptionist told The Lawyer we were there and He came out to meet us. Sixty-five-ish, white, smiling and shaking hands all over the place, as if this chance to meet a real-life lawyer would surely be the highlight of our week. “And you must be Leeann,” he said, taking my hand once he finished with The Husband. Then he led us to his office.

So we followed him down the hall. But there was a problem: He hadn’t mentioned his name. I know. I could have just waited until we were seated in his office. He would surely have all kinds of fancy framed lawyer-like qualifications out where we could see them. But it just seemed so rude. As if, after years of effort, we were finally going to be allowed to meet Barack Obama. Or Michael Bublé. As if, of course we knew all about him. Had memorized the entry about him in “Weyburn Who’s Who”, and been monitoring his social life in the society pages of “Weyburn This Week”.

And so I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.” The Lawyer was quiet for a second. Like he’d never been asked this before. Then he quickly introduced himself, and spent the rest of the meeting ignoring me as much as possible, looking The Husband in the eye while he explained the papers we both had to sign. The Husband was mortified. But I felt strangely vindicated by the whole experience.

 

Reykjavik

I was reading an Icelandic murder mystery, wondering exactly what the streets of Reykjavik look like. Then I remembered why I don’t know.

Sometime after her 80^th birthday my Grandma Vi went to Rekjavik on her own (it was some kind of group tour). A few days after she got back, when my mom’s cousin asked if she could see the photos, Vi answered a little louder than necessary. “If you want to see Iceland so bad,” she told Cousin Patty, pointing, “you save your own money and you go there yourself. That’s what I did. And I’m not showing you any pictures.” Nobody mentioned Iceland again that summer.

It wasn’t the first time Vi had said something a bit harsh. Earlier that summer I’d gone to pick her up and she’d come to the door of her condo, camera in hand. I looked at it and she told me “I was going to take your picture. But not with your hair looking like that.”

By the time my Grandma Vi died she had quite a reputation for her sharp tongue. I can’t excuse all of her comments (that time she insisted her legs were nicer than my friend's was just plain rude. And when she went to the premiere of my first play she didn’t have to say “Sara [my sister] is writing a movie, you know”.)

But I understood a little better this past July when another cousin said, “Your Grandfather took so many pictures, but I don’t think Vi ever figured out how to run the camera after he died.” When she lost my Grandfather, Vi lost her husband, her friend, her travelling companion, and her photographer. Suddenly there was a little more meaning behind her outlandish outburst about Iceland. And my hair.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to Reykjavik. But I hope I’ll always have someone to go with.

 

AgCanada

I've been writing a new series for Country Guide magazine - short stories about a Saskatchewan farm family going through real problems. The family is fictional. Really. This has NOTHING to do with our problems.... 

AgCanada.

(in case you don't click through, the story is about the family dealing with the fact that it was too wet to seed much this year. We seeded lots. 4.8 acres according to Brad's GPS.)

Birthday Piñatas: Fun Party Game or Evil Force?

If you’ve never spent an hour a day for two weeks gluing newspaper soaked in homemade paste to a balloon hanging from the basement ceiling, maybe you didn’t grow up with a love-hate relationship to the birthday piñata.

In the old days, you had to make your own piñata or wait for your grandparents to bring one home from their cross-border foray into Mexico. Now, you can buy cartoon-themed piñatas in any old WalMart. I loved these. Until Mary’s third birthday. You could see from her disappointed face that she’d learned a horrible lesson about human nature.  “Dora,” she said sadly. The she sighed, shook her head, and looked over at the pack of cousins who’d just whacked her life-sized Dora piñata to death with sticks. Laughing.

There is more than one way to skin a piñata. We went to a little girl’s birthday party last summer where the Mom had pre-stuffed a piñata with carefully labeled loot bags. Rather than hitting the piñata to free the loot, the kids took turns pulling on colored ribbons. When the bags finally tumbled out, the kids shared the treats.

The next day’s party had more of a freestyle “bashing” approach. At one point the birthday-boy’s grandmother shouted “They don’t have to take turns! They need to whack it harder!” Then she took a wild blindfolded swing at the paper-mache horse and nearly hit a small girl with the baseball bat. When the candy fell out, it was a mad free for all. Some of the smaller kids wound up eating nearby rocks by accident.

Soon I’ll be forced to make the decision every mom must eventually make. What sort of piñata mom will I be?  Hopefully, the kind that just takes everyone bowling.

First Practice

After he fell for the third time, Matt sprawled out boneless across the ice. Then he lifted his chin and glared at the coach. “I’m not skating,” he said. “Get my mommy.”

I don’t know what I was thinking. My three-year old was way too small to even walk while wearing all that heavy hockey gear, let alone learn to skate in it.

Well, to be honest, I do know what I was thinking.

I was remembering the sad eyes of those three boys in my small town high school class. Those three teenage boys who didn’t play hockey.  I remember them slouched in their desks, looking longingly at the door. Left behind in Mr.Kreiter’s algebra class while the boys on the hockey team tumbled into a bus, bound for a far away rink filled with adventures, strange girls, and all the pop they could drink.

I want my son to have every opportunity. Algebra, sure. But more important, that feeling of belonging that seems to come a lot easier for boys who play on the hockey team.

And hockey’s tricky. If kids don’t start early and build strong skating and stick-handling skills, they’re not likely to pick up the sport later, when they realize they want to be part of the team.

I knew it would be hard. Not so much for my small boy, swimming in a layer of plastic-smelling new protective gear. But for me. I’d be spending my evenings and weekends waiting in hockey rinks from Radville to Rosetown. Eating greasy hamburgers. Driving an SUV that smells like boys’ feet. Breaking nails to tighten skates. Pretending to be interested in how the games turned out. Trying to figure out the rules.

But I’m a mom. And this is what moms do. So my husband and I spent more on size-small hockey gear than some people spend on a car and drove our son twenty miles to his first practice.

 “Don’t worry if he can’t skate yet,” the coach had said. “None of them can. They’ll figure it out.”

Apparently, some of them were less stubborn than Matt.

And soon I was on skates for the first time in twenty years, slow-stepping my way out to the middle of the rink to haul Matt up by the armpits and drag him back to the boards.

The coach barely laughed when I fell down. Twice.

Was I the worst parent ever? Would my boy be the one left to stare at quadratic equations, holding back tears while other boys ran to the bus?

By the time I dragged Matt off the ice and we made our way to the dressing room, I was the one trying not to cry. Matt sat on the bench, singing to himself, while my husband and I took off his padding and folded it back into the bag.

“I guess that didn’t work out,” my husband said.

Then Matt piped up. “What’s the matter?” he said.  “Don’t you like my song?”

No Experience Required

If you happen to be looking for new ways to feel like a real ass, you could try getting the swather stuck in a slough.  There’s just nothing like that feeling you get while you’re holding up the entire harvest, waiting for The Husband and The Father-In-Law to show up with the four-wheel-drive tractor to pull you out. 

He did mumble something about how maybe next time I notice I’m cutting down actual cattails, I could consider taking a walk through the slough, to see how wet it is before I plough right in, but otherwise The Husband was patient and polite about the whole stupid event.  (Although I’m sure by the time he’s done telling the story, he’ll have added a pair of furious ducks swimming right beside the two-feet deep tire tracks I dug for myself.)

The truth is that if I had to apply for this Childcare / Housekeeping / FarmHand gig I seem to be holding down, I doubt I’d even get an interview.  I’m not qualified at all.  Childcare?  The thirteen-year old who babysits The Boy taken a course and has a certificate to prove it.  But I’m just treating the whole project like a giant science experiment (hmm…. What’ll come out if I add lentil puree to his chocolate chip cookies?).  And the Housekeeping?  Don’t even ask.  

I’ve no idea how I ended up with this gig.  And no idea how long it will last before I’m found out and fired.  I can only hope that happens soon.