Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2013-07

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Carol Dilworth sends a reference to mood-altering books
• The editor recalls an eccentric character from her youth
• Pat Moore sends the predictions of a couple of futurologists
• Catherine Nesbitt forwards little Johnny´s excuse for being late
• Betty Audet and Catherine Green remind us of universal laws
• Sites are suggested by Bruce Galway, Carol Hansen, Catherine Green, Catherine Nesbitt, and Tony Lewis

Recommended by Carol Dilworth, the Guardian in the UK recently published an article on the power of books to lift your mood:

MOOD-ALTERING BOOKS

The bibliotherapy service of the Guardian maintains that books, particularly novels, not only have the power to lift spirits, but to effect fundamental psychological shifts, healing and enriching the heart, the intellect, and the soul in extraordinary ways. Fiction, with its vast array of human experience, is a resource we would be foolish to ignore when we are struggling in our lives: whatever we´re going through, someone in the pages of a novel has been there, too.

They gave a link to The Reading Agency´s 2012 list of "mood-boosting books":

http://readingagency.org.uk/adults/tips/mood-boosting-books-2012-list.html

A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon

The Beach Café, by Lucy Diamond

Being Human, by Neil Astley

The Big Over Easy, by Jasper Fforde

Big Stone Gap, by Adriana Trigiani

Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee

Couch Fiction, by Philippa Perry

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie

Hector and the Search for Happiness, by Francois Lelord

Life According to Lubka, by Laurie Graham

Life with the Lid Off, by Nicola Hodgkinson

A Little History of the World, by E. H. Gombrich

Major Pettigrew´s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

Men at Work, by Mike Gayle

Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson

Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver

The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford

Smoke and Mirrors, by Neil Gaiman

A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon

Tackling Life, by Charlie Oatway

That Awkward Age, by Roger McGough

To the Moon and Back, by Jill Mansell

Trouble on the Heath, by Terry Jones

A Winter Book, by Tove Jansson

Stop What You´re Doing and Read This - Various contributors

Tales of the City, by Armistead Maupin

Waterlog, by Roger Deakin

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

They are on the look-out for recommendations for their 2013 Mood-boosting Books list. Whether it´s a novel, non-fiction, poetry, or a graphic novel, they would love to hear about the books that have made you feel better.

Tweet your recommendations using #moodboosting or e-mail them with your uplifting reads. Your recommendations will then be put to reading groups, who will decide which books make it into the final list, which will be released in May 2013.

MRS. CRUICKSHANK

I never knew her first names; from the first time I met her, when I was about 12 years old, she was always called Mrs. Cruickshank.

We lived for a short time in Canoe, BC, about seven miles from Salmon Arm, and the Cruickshanks lived in a large house on extensive grounds beside our small bungalow. Mrs. Cruickshank descended on us shortly after our arrival, and became a frequent visitor. She and Mother enjoyed a relationship at which I can only guess, but she had been a teacher in Ontario, and my mother was an intelligent woman whose schooling had been interrupted when she was 14 and she had to work as a hired girl after her father died.

I remember Mrs. Cruickshank shuffling around in Canoe in a moth-eaten fur coat, accompanied by her equally-scruffy old dog. They were a common sight, walking slowly along the roads. At some point, her husband, whom she called "old Cruickshank," must have died, because after we moved to Salmon Arm, she also turned up there, alone.

She was walking on the street there one day when she was observed by a new doctor to the town. He took one look at her, and approached her and said, "I know what is wrong with you! Come up to my office."

He did indeed know what was wrong with her - something to do with her thyroid gland? - and his treatment was so effective that she "flew up the hill like a bird," as she later told Mother. There was no more stumbling for her.

She was a frequent visitor until she was in her 70s, when she applied for a job teaching in a small town on the BC-Yukon border. In her application she said she had been a teacher for 20 years, but she neglected to tell them how old she was. Being in the back of beyond, they probably didn´t get many applications, and she was accepted. They must have been shocked when she showed up.

Nonetheless, she was very popular in that school, and she was missed when she finally quit. It may have been that the mile she had to walk to and from school became too much even for her hardy soul.

The last I heard of this redoubtable woman, she was in Golden, up in the Rockies, where she was teaching English to the Chinese laundry owners. The young teacher from Ontario had come a long way from her beginnings, to lie at last in the mountains of British Columbia.

Pat Moore forwards the predictions of two prominent futurologists about

WHAT THE WORLD MIGHT BE LIKE IN 100 YEARS

1. Oceans will be extensively farmed and not just for fish.

We will need to feed 10 billion people and nature can´t keep up with demand, so we will need much more ocean farming for fish. But algae farming is also on the way for renewable energy.

2. We will have the ability to communicate through thought transmission.

Transmission will be just as easy as other forms of brain augmentation. Picking up thoughts and relaying them to another brain will not be much harder than storing them on the net.

3. Thanks to DNA and robotic engineering, we will have created incredibly intelligent humans who are immortal.

It is more likely that direct brain links using electronics will achieve this, but GM will help a lot by increasing longevity - keeping people alive until electronic immortality technology is freely available at reasonable cost.

4. We will be able to control the weather.

There is already some weather control technology for mediating tornadoes, making it rain, and so on, and thanks to climate change concerns, a huge amount of knowledge is being gleaned on how weather works.

5. We will all be wired to computers to make our brains work faster.

We can expect this as soon as 2050 for many people. By 2075 most people in the developed world will use machine augmentation of some sort for their brains and, by the end of the century, pretty much everyone will.

6. We will have figured out nuclear fusion.

This is likely by 2045-2050 and almost certain by 2100. It´s widely predicted that we will achieve this. What difference it makes will depend on what other energy technologies we have.

7. There will only be three languages in the world - English, Spanish, and Mandarin.

This does look like a powerful trend; other languages don´t stand a lot of chance. Minor languages are dying at a huge rate already and the other major ones are mostly in areas where everyone educated speaks at least one of the other three.

8. California will lead the break-up of the US.

There are some indications already that California wants to split off and such pressures tend to build over time. It is hard to see this waiting until the end of the century.

9. Space elevators will make space travel cheap and easy.

First space elevators will certainly be around, and although "cheap" is a relative term, it will certainly be a lot cheaper than conventional space development.

10. Deserts will become tropical forests.

Desert greening is progressing so this is just about possible.

ED. NOTE: These predictions sound more like science fiction to me than science. Thought transmission? Brains enhanced by computers? Ten billion people, combined with immortality, on an already crowded earth? Maybe they should have speculated about space exploration, because we will inevitably run our of room.

Catherine Nesbitt forwards a novel excuse for being late:

MY DADDY SLEEPS NAKED

"Late again!" the third-grade teacher sternly said to little Johnny.

"It ain´t my fault this time, Miss Russell. You can blame this ´un on my Daddy. The reason I´m three hours late is my Daddy sleeps naked!"

Now, Miss Russell had taught grammar school for thirty-some-odd years. Despite her mounting fears, she asked little Johnny what he meant by that. Full of grins and mischief, and in the flower of his youth, little Johnny and trouble were old friends, but he always told her the truth.

"You see, Miss Russell, out at the farm we got this here low-down fox. The last few nights, he done ate six hens. Last night, when Daddy heard a noise out in the chicken pen, he grabbed his double barrelled shotgun and said to my Ma, ´That fox is back again ... I´m a gonna git him! Stay back,´ Daddy whispered to all us kids.

"My Daddy was naked as a jaybird - no boots, no pants, no shirt! To the hen house he crawled, just like an Injun on the snoop. Then he stuck that double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun through the window of the coop. As he stared into the darkness, with a fox on his mind, our old hound dog, Rip, had done gone and woke up and comes sneaking up behind Daddy. Then, as we all looked on, plumb helpless, old Rip done went and stuck his cold nose in my Daddy´s crack!

"Miss Russell, we all been cleanin´ chickens since three o´clock this mornin´!"

Betty Audet and Catherine Green suggest you forget Newton and Galileo; here are the real laws of nature:

COSMIC LAWS

1. Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you´ll have to pee...

2. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place in the universe.

3. Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

4. Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal - and someone always answers.

6. Variation Law - If you impatiently change lines when standing, or traffic lanes while driving, the one you were in will always move faster than the one you moved to.

7. Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

8. Law of Close Encounters - The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don´t want to be seen with.

9. Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won´t work, IT WILL!

10. Law of Bio-Mechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

11. Law of the theatre and hockey arena - At any given event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the restroom, and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies. and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

12. The Coffee Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

13. Murphy´s Law of Lockers - If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

14. Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor are directly correlated with the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

15. Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible if you don´t know what you are talking about.

16. Brown´s Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they´re ugly.

17. Oliver´s Law of Public Speaking - A closed mouth gathers no feet.

18. Wilson´s Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

19. Doctors´ Law - If you don´t feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor; by the time you get there you´ll feel better. But don´t make an appointment, and you´ll stay sick.

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Bruce Galway sends this link to a close-up look at a beaver family working on their house on the Bow River in Alberta:

Bruce thinks that after watching this video, you will think differently when the Internet seems slow:

Carol Hansen thinks this has been around before, but it´s worth seeing again - a car that looks like a little red wagon:

Carol also sends this link to a sight that few will ever see in person - penguins at home in Antarctica:

Catherine Green thinks this video is scary, showing how software can track you online:

Catherine Nesbitt forwards another masterpiece by Andre Rieu, starring Mary Poppins:

Tony Lewis sends the URL for a tribute to Hockey Night in Canada on its 60th anniversary:

This video of a couple of cats playing patty cake is cute:

Germany is shutting down 17 nuclear reactors in the next 10 years, and is investing $260 billion dollars in renewables. The goal is to get 80% of the nation´s energy from renewable resources:

In celebration of the Year of the Snake, here is a clever painting done with one stroke:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to