Naomi P. Lane's Blog

(photo by RitaE on pixabay)

Most of us don’t have the money to buy gifts for all our friends. There are some affordable and easy ways to stretch your dollar this Christmas by getting a little creative, even if you think you are not a crafty person.

I cannot bake, but I can buy a batch of baking from someone else and split it up to make small gift packages. Often, in November or December, your local hospital, church, or charity will have bake goods sales so you are supporting a worthy cause. You can buy food early and freeze it for gift giving.

Another great idea is those soup making kits that are very reasonable in price and last for several meals. Friends on a budget will really appreciate their good value. Read the instructions to make sure they don’t need to add ingredients they may not have. For example, if the recipe calls for a can of coconut milk, you could include this is their gift bag.

If you have kids, you can offer them an allowance to make you some crafty ornaments to give to your friends. Everyone loves homemade decorations, especially those made by children. This kills two birds, because your kids probably will want a few bucks to buy you a Christmas present.

You could also take a photo of you with your friends and have them developed. Who doesn’t love a photo of themselves? We tend to have so many digital photos and forget to ever print any off. This can be done at your local office supply store or most big box stores if you bring in your phone or tablet, or just a flash drive. Some stores will let you email the photos to them. You can buy a cheap frame at any dollar store.

So don’t let Christmas gift giving stress you out. Adults really appreciate any small token of your affection. If you’re having a family gathering, you can draw names to buy only one person a gift and everyone will be relieved. You can set a lower spending limit to encourage silly, fun gifts that will make people laugh around the table. You know your uncle really wants those beer goggles anyways, right?

Do you have a money saving idea for gift giving? Please subscribe and share a comment below.

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Even after you retire, that surge of energy you get every fall when everyone goes back to school / college/ work / and family routine still hits you hard. The palpable change in the weather only accentuates this shift into busyness. You can almost hear a hum in the air, just as the road traffic increases, so does the human output.

I remember loving the start of every university year. Being on campus was such a thrill. There were new people to meet from around the world, new cultural events to attend, and new things to learn. You could accidentally wander into a modern dance rehearsal, a student film screening, or a political speaker, all while making your way to class. It was like living in the best microcosm of society.

Then, as a working teacher for thirty years, I lived by the school calendar where fall meant back to work. There were always nerves at start-up, for the teachers as much as the students. We never knew what kind of class we were getting and where the challenges would lie. It was always an adventure as if we were strapped to the hood of the jeep for a safari.

Nowadays, the fall signals a time to get back into writing. I always take a hiatus over the summer to get outdoors and enjoy the sunshine. I love when the cooler days invite me back inside to hunker down and spend every morning in my creative office space. I get the luxury of shutting out the real world to create my own world of fiction. This is truly my happy place.

How do you feel about the fall busyness? Does it invoke more stress for you? Please subscribe / share a comment below.

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When I was growing up, my parents always had CBC radio playing in the house, so in between all the cultural talk, we were exposed to every kind of musical interlude. My mother also played the piano every day. She played very well and could effectively bang out Scott Joplin’s rags or any other classical piece from the standard repertoire.

My father had a violin, a viola, and a very nice wooden recorder, which had survived his exodus as a Jewish teenager from Germany just before WWII. He would pull them out only occasionally and my mother told me he had perfect pitch. I think that music opened every emotional wound he had because his father and mother had been killed by the Nazis. He fondly remembered his father playing cello in several chamber music ensembles. He would tell the story of his three cellos, the most basic he called “Nebelung” or “foghorn”, which he took on the tram to rehearsals. My father often cried at the symphony, but he loved going. Interestingly, I have a vivid memory of myself crying over my eggs at the kitchen table when I was about five. There was classical music playing on the radio and my mother said, “What’s wrong?” and I said, “It’s the music. It’s just so sad!” I suppose intergenerational trauma is real.

I tried piano lessons as a kid but hated them. Then I discovered the guitar at age eleven and loved it and took classical lessons for six years. Then in high school I played flute in the band and sax in the jazz band. I got pretty serious about the flute and would ride the bus downtown every Friday for private lessons at the Vancouver Music School. I was devastated when my parents said they couldn’t afford for me to live in residence to study music at UBC. In hindsight, it was a good thing. I didn’t have a performer’s bone in my body. I am still very shy about playing in front of anyone.

As a retired person, I always have ambient music playing in my house. I don’t like silence. I prefer gentle world music, jazz, upbeat electronic dance music, and even rap. I’m pleased that both my kids learned piano and various other instruments and enjoyed the process. I kept the fallboard from my mum’s hundred-year-old piano, which had lived out its lifespan, ironically at the exact same time she passed. A good friend added some lovely coat hooks to it in my front foyer. It’s a daily reminder of her playing.

How has music influenced your life? Please share a comment / subscribe below.

I’m excited to reveal the cover for book 2 of my sci-fi climate based romance trilogy. It will go on sale Nov. 28th, but pre-order is now available for the e-book on Amazon. (The paperback will also be available for pre-order soon, right after I receive and review my author’s proof copy.) Here is a synopsis of the story:

When saving the planet means risking everything...

How far would you go?  

 This second book in the 2084 Climate Chronicles can be read on its own, though the story is richer after Deep Dive.

In Concrete Solutions, Zane returns from exile, eager to rebuild a normal life with Misha and their daughter, Clovis. Life in the dome settles into a rhythm as he resumes his work in engineering, until he is chosen for a daring space mission that could change the course of his future. 

 Misha continues her deep-sea diving and lab research, but when an accident forces her to step away, she accepts a new position at a remote CO₂ injection site where she forms an unexpected friendship.

When a mistake at work causes a devastating industrial accident, the stability they fought for unravels. In search of redemption, Zane and Misha turn their energy toward creating a groundbreaking solution that could help rewild the planet. But a ruthless rival is determined to stop them, and sabotage puts their lives at risk.

 Will they succeed in making a scientific breakthrough, or will they end up doing more harm than good?

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When I was twenty-three years old, I took the train across Canada from my university in Montreal to Vancouver to go home for Christmas.

In Alberta, two cute boys got on the train, so naturally I started chatting with them. As we got to talking, it turned out that one of them was a reporter for a small town newspaper. He mentioned the he covered the local arts and music scene and the town had recently hosted a writers retreat with some famous names.

Now I was friends with the son and daughter of one of Canada’s best poets. He and his equally famous poet wife would eventually become my in-laws. They were also living in Montreal at the time and we had got together for visits a couple of times. When I told this reporter of our connection, he said he also knew them well from when they all lived in Swift Current Saskatchewan.

I invited these two boys to hang out with me and my bestie in Vancouver for Xmas week and we played tour guide for them. The reporter randomly asked me if I would take the poets a goose from his farm in Alberta for Christmas if he could arrange to have a family member meet me at the train station in Field, Alberta for the handoff. I said sure, why not?

So, there I was, in the dead of winter, being handed a frozen goose on some desolate train platform in the middle of nowhere. I asked the club car porter to stow it in their freezer for the remainder of the journey. Then we carried on across another million miles of prairie and forest.

Then, train trouble in Sudbury! We all had to disembark and got loaded onto a Greyhound bus. My goose went into the baggage hold. By the time we got to Montreal, it has thawed and stunk and I had to throw it out. All I got for my troubles was a good story to tell.

These types of chance encounters are what life is made of. Have you ever met someone who made a lasting impression? Please subscribe and leave a comment below.

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As my husband sits watching yet another true crime show about some murderer, I am left wondering what this fascination is about. I mean, my husband is an average, normal guy so why does he waste his time glorifying these horrible people who ruin the lives of others? This only feeds into the fame machine, when publishers and filmmakers come knocking to offer wads of cash to glorify their sordid lives.

I think we are all secretly afraid that if we turn a screw slightly inside our minds, everything would change and we could turn as dark as these criminals. Perhaps we have all felt moments in our lives when we have behaved badly and someone else got hurt. Perhaps we have known someone who left us feeling uneasy, like they might do something very dangerous or bad if they didn’t get help. I once taught a child who was caught hurting animals, so we threw every counseling, mentoring, family support, and professional intervention at him hoping to improve his outcomes. Unfortunately, as a teacher, we seldom hear how they turn out as adults.

Do we actually take pleasure in watching these stories play out on film or listening to them on podcasts? Perhaps we feel some satisfaction in knowing they got their just deserts because they wound up in prison. My husband loves watching the prison environment because of its lack of rules. It’s a place where the perpetrators finally get treated as harshly as their victims were. There seems to be an unspoken acceptance of an eye for an eye justice, at least in American institutions. We are shown very little of any positive rehabilitation, which is sad. (Check out Scandinavian prisons to see an opposing view.)

So how do you feel about true crime shows? Are you drawn to them or repulsed by them? Please subscribe / share a comment below.

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There is much chatter in the writing community about the evils of AI. It is generally seen as the ultimate threat to creative originality and authentic publication of our work. Writers have to worry about plagiarism and having our work sucked into the great AI vacuum for its training purposes without any cited attribution or compensation. Graphic artists and photographers are being replaced by AI generated images, which robs them of their livelihood. It is hard to even tell what is real and what is fake.

The flipside of this are some of the great uses for AI, which I am gradually hearing about through my friends. One such friend was troubleshooting a problem with an electronic gadget in his home and he got AI to read the entire instruction manual and find the solution in about two minutes. This saved him hours of frustration and he was able to zero in on the problem and fix it quickly.

My daughter was recently comparison shopping online for some specific niche baby products and she used AI to enter the features she wanted and it instantly narrowed down the search from hundreds of options to only two models that met her needs. She is also saving time by using AI to help write her personal bios and curriculum vitaes for the art shows she enters.

As a retired teacher, I’m now hearing that my colleagues are saving hours of time preparing report cards using AI. While they can still tailor the comments to each individual, the program can instantly do things like listing curriculum requirements or age-specific behavior expectations and grade level performance standards. I am pleased they are finding ways to decrease their overwhelming workload.

Are you using AI in your daily life, either at work or at home? Please subscribe / leave a comment below.

(photo by Frederico Ghadini on pixabay)

No matter when you were born, it seems that you will be defined by the decade of your teen years. The labels, such as Gen X or Gen Z, apply to your year of birth, but it’s the decade of your teens that really leaves a mark on you. These are the memories you hold onto the most dearly.

I am a baby-boomer, born in the sixties, but my teens were in the seventies, so I feel defined by this decade. We were defined by bell-bottom jeans, smoking pot, muscle cars, and collecting vinyl record albums. We hung out in nature because we didn’t have the internet or cell phones. We mostly listened to rock music, like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, or folk music, such as Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.

Gen-X (born 1965-1980) spent their teen years in the 1990’s. The played with Transformers, My Little Pony, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The mixed tape was the ultimate gift for lovers, which may have included Michael Jackson, GunsN’ Roses, U2, Coolio or Run DMC. As adults, they are self-starters and innovators who are good at making money in non-traditional ways.

My kids are Millennials, (born 1981-1996). Their cultural references from childhood include: collecting Pokemon cards, Pogs, Bayblades, and Tamagotchi digital pets. Their teens in the 2000’s included wearing tear-away pants, reading Harry Potter, and playing Sonic and DDR (if you know you know), Music from their teens included: My Chemical Romance, Chumbawumba, and the Spice Girls. The adult descriptors of their generation: being super comfortable with technology, seeking to strike a healthy work-life balance, and delaying marriage into their late thirties. They are also good at scrimping and saving to get through tough times.

Gen Z (born 1997-2012) mostly listens to rap, hip-hop or indie artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Cardi B, Doja Cat, Olivia Rodrigo, or Billie Eilish. As kids they played with Monster or Bratz High dolls, Littlest Pet Shops, Nintendo Switch, and Lego Gear Bots. They value individuality in style, with an ugly-cute esthetic and products that are useful and sustainable.  As adults, they are concerned with climate change and social justice.

Finally, the current generation is called Gen Alpha. They were born from 2010 until the present and have lived entirely in the 21st century. Their characteristics are still being defined.

Which generation are you and what toys, products, or music from your youth bring back the most memories? Please subscribe / leave a comment below. 

The smartest woman I ever knew was my mum. This may sound trite, but it’s actually true. She was top of her class in French, Math, and Latin in high school. In the mid 1940’s , she was the only woman in the law program from her graduating class at Sheffield University. After university, WW2 broke out, so she joined the WRENS (Women’s Royal English Naval Service) and became a Morse coder. She wanted to join the coding branch but was denied access due to having last name of German origin.

Otherwise, who knows? She may have become part of the famous Bletchley Park coders. Notable women from this group include Joan Clarke, who worked alongside Alan Turing, as well as Jean Valentine, an operator of the Bombe deciphering machine. Mavis Batey was instrumental in deciphering messages from to the Abwehr Enigma, used by German intelligence. Their contributions were vital to shortening the war and protecting Allied forces. But I digress…

After moving to Canada in 1954, my mum never practiced law. She had children and worked as a school secretary here, which was a waste of her talents in my opinion, but she was happy. In her spare time, after she retired, she took calculus for fun and scored 99% in the course! She also played piano very well and rocked the New York Times crossword and sudoku puzzles every morning until she died, just before her 95th birthday.

So, remember, you don’t need to look far to find your personal heroes. They may be closer than you think. Do you have a personal hero? Please subscribe/ comment below.

(image by Inspiredimages on Pixabay)

Hello friends. A little bird told me that book 1 of my new climate fiction / romance trilogy goes on sale today! ( Please see last week’s blog post for details). Here are the American and Canadian links:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F8FW9CNN?...

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0F8FW9ChNN

Now here is a poem for your consideration:

Childish Things

house

hallway

lying on tummies

driving Barbies in shoe cars

along slippery black lined wood floors

sleepovers

zippers

burrowing inside fleecy sleeping bags

bright images of camping families with

tail wagging dogs

dining room table

blanket fort

flashlights bring

giggling ghosts

Archie comics

kiss Veronica

cats in the window

cats in the flower beds

cats on the tv

turn the channel knob

clunk, clunk, clunk

Indian chief at midnight

cats on my bed

45 records with

swirly plastic inserts

pink box player

paisley bell-bottoms

go-go dancing

singing our heads off

long, long, phone cord

pull it downstairs

pull it outside

gossip, gossip, gossip

Teen Beat magazine

he is so cute!

riding bikes

across the town

down to Dairy Queen

throw them on the grass

hot, hot day

frozen in time