Tag Archives: Spit & Polish

St. George, or naming characters and the sometimes sensitive outcomes of this


Happy St. George’s Day! I do hope you are celebrating with something tasty, or wrestling dragons, or scaring snakes, or whatever suits your fancy.

St. George was one of the saints responsible for soldiers, as well as one of those fighting plague and leprosy. He, coincidentally, was born on the same day as Shakespeare (if you can believe any facts about that latter mystical person).

So he would have been an appropriate persona for a story about soldiers and tuberculosis, but that’s not why I chose George as the name for one of my characters in Spit & Polish.

Nor was it because my grandfather was named George, nor that there was a fellow in my writing group named George. I chose it simply because it was a name appropriate for the time period.

But then I got into hot water. You see, the George in my book is a bad guy. Not a super bad guy, just a man of his time, with the associated expectations of the late 1940’s. Men were meant to dominate women. All women lived for a man. Every woman wanted a husband, any husband, and any woman who said they wanted a career was just playing games. My main character, Ruth, is at first attracted to handsome George, but soon realizes he wants more from her than she can give.

George doesn’t take this well.

What this Saint’s Day made me think of is how easy it is for our readers to think we are writing about them or someone they know when we use their names or similar histories. The fellow in my writing group got quite hot under the collar as my George revealed his nastier side. Didn’t help that the group all commented about it every time he came up in my readings. Especially when he was bad. (The character, I mean…)

Other times, when I’ve written pieces, people often think I am writing about myself, or them, even when I don’t use their names. They get hurt, or angry, or even overly excited. But truly, it isn’t about them, or me! Most of the time, anyway.

from susanleighnoble’s excellent blog entry on the subject

Selecting the name for a character isn’t easy. I found it simpler to name my children, to be frank. (see what I did there?) I scour obituaries from the period I am writing about, read appropriate news articles for names, try them out over and over, and still somehow I end up offending someone. My bad female character, for example, was named Patricia, which I am sure someone thinks I directed at a person I know, but no. Again, it was just a name from that time. Though it was fun using it…

Because, truthfully, sometimes it’s a source of glee. The evil part of me enjoys teasing my readers with suppositions. Did I mean to imply that they are like the character? Or am I really assigning that behaviour to their cousin/uncle/father/town leader? It was particularly enjoyable when I wrote my first book, Recycled Virgin, playing with religious names and events. My readers spent the first pages trying to figure out who each character was meant to be, while I just smiled. It was fun searching for the various iterations of the name Mary over the centuries and cultures, though. I do love the research. But then I have to commit, and stick a name on a character, for good or ill.

And then I find out I have somehow named everyone with a name starting with B, so I have to go through and change most of them so readers (and the writer) don’t mess them up. We hope.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to write fantasy or science fiction, where I could make up names and avoid this situation…though I suspect there are treacherous paths even there. Naming characters is such a huge piece of creating them, and it is worth the time to sort them out properly. Maybe even clear them with people you love…;-)

I’m adding this lovely painting by Scot Gustafson because I love the way he has made the dragon the size to look St. George in the eye. In the sculpture we had in my house growing up, the poor dragon was so small George’s horse could have squashed it with his hoof. I prefer an even playing field. As did Ruth, in Spit & Polish.

Happy St. George’s Day! Why not take your local dragon out for a chummy drink, instead? Though it MAY annoy your horse.

AWOL but now returned


I’ve been away from this blog for several weeks now, after all the entries relating to my new book (Spit & Polish). Partly, I wanted to give you lovely people who subscribe to this blog a bit of a breather. Partly, I was recovering from many week away from home base – I was looking after my kids’ cat and had to relocate for weeks. Coming back, I had all of those appointments and other foolishnesses to catch up on. Sucks the brain away.

And finally partly because, when I returned, I decided I couldn’t live without a cat of my own. I adopted one that (of course) required a five hour driving session to his shelter (Furry Tales Rescue) and back (He is big and orange and polydactyl, so I had to have him), followed by the usual buying frenzy and the somewhat more unusual trying to figure out what was wrong with his leg. But we’re getting along and I’m trying to keep him loving me while also helping him learn the rules of the house. He seems to be settling in well. I’ve named him Archy, after the Archy in Archy and Mehitabel, a book I’ve loved for years. (Archy is a cockroach/ beat poet, but with all those extra toes and my Archy’s singing voice, I think it works)

Look at those toes!

So work has taken a bit of a backseat of late. I am just starting the research for the sequel to Spit & Polish, hoping to get it tied up in draft by the end of the year. In-between I have a few editing projects lined up (by all means contact me if you need a developmental editor as I still have some spaces available), plus my usual onslaught of volunteer activities. This feeling like I have to make a contribution is exhausting sometimes, but to be honest most of my commitments are great fun and grist for the writing mill.

I’m now seeking input for the next book – in it, my nursing student, Ruth Maclean, is sent for her rotation to the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital, once known as the Rockwood Asylum. It’s 1947, and treatments for the mentally ill are still pretty basic. The concept of treating mental illness, as versus just hiding its sufferers away, is still new, but the building here was designed by William Coverdale with all the best of intentions, with lots of light and privacy. (It’s not the building’s fault it now is vacant, falling apart, and perhaps haunted.)

Rockwood Asylum

I mean, just look at all those windows! Very unusual at the time for psychiatric hospitals, even more so for asylums for the criminally insane like Rockwood. It’s going to be fun to research more about this building and its inhabitants.

During the time my fictional Ruth is on placement there, there was an existing nursing education program running on site, for Registered Psychiatric Nurses. I can only imagine the tensions between all of the nursing programs in Kingston at the time – the Kingston General Hospital School, the Hotel Dieu School, Queen’s University, and this one. Competition for the best jobs, various comments about discrepancies in programs – this is all familiar to me from my time at Queen’s, where there was still great tension between regular nurses who trained for their RNs, and those that opted for the university program to get their BNSc. Could lead to some interesting interpersonal interludes.

So I’m looking for any information about psychiatric nursing schools, inter school competition, psychiatric care in 1947, and life in Canada in the post-war period. I’d be most grateful if you have any tidbits to share that I could insert into Ruth’s life.

It’s going to be a bit of a challenging time for Ruth again, I’m afraid. Money remains tight, doctors are flirtatious, supervisors are demanding, patients are difficult. Someone may even have an unfortunate “accident.”

I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

You can get a Quick Look at the Museum of Health Care here:

Not celebrating International Women’s Day


Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

I just can’t. I am too close to rage about the state of women’s rights in the world today. It’s all cheery to say “Yay, Women!”, but hey, why are we still not being paid the correct rate? Why do republican candidates in the US think it’s okay to play Stepford Wives and talk in mealy-mouthed voices and fight reproductive choice? Why do women and men both seem to feel that women belong in the kitchen, preferably pregnant and docile? Why is the Christ I learned about being touted as someone who wanted women to bow and scrape to men? (I don’t remember that lesson). Why are we still overwhelmingly likely to suffer violence, even from those who purport to love us?

It’s enraging, as someone who grew up in the long long fight of trying to be treated as an equal.

And year by year, month by month, day by day, I am seeing women’s rights being eroded everywhere. Even here in my beloved Canada, things are slipping. Not that we’ve ever been allowed to be equals, no. But at least the effort used to be there.

I’ve led a fairly quiet life, and yet I have had to suffer multiple instances of sexual assault, had to endure being paid much less than someone doing my exact job, had to fight to be seen despite accruing qualifications and expertise. It’s annoying, and dangerous. And I’m living in a “democracy”, as vs. a place where I would be required not to be seen at all.

There are many many places like that. I’m grateful not to live in any of those places, but on the other hand, I’ve been raised to believe in equality of opportunity. It feels bad to lose it. And I worry about our kids and grandkids who have to try to push their way forward. It feels so redundant to fight for rights again, to fight for women and the2SLGBTQ+ community, to worry about anyone who isn’t a white male being the object of hatred. And I worry about the white males, too. It must be terrifying to lose privilege. Perhaps they could use this understanding and apply it to the treatment of everyone else? And don’t they wish they could have a broader definition of their roles than the standard one?

So that’s why I don’t celebrate International Women’s Day. It feels like wearing a pink t-shirt against bullying. Pretty but ultimately meaningless.

In my recent book, Spit & Polish, I write about a time where women had very limited opportunities. The war was over, and the men coming back took back all the jobs that women did so well while they were off fighting. Women were back to being nurses, secretaries, teachers — if they were allowed out of the house at all. Ruth Maclean, my main character, is part of a new change in nursing. Nurses were working to become less of a drudge, more of an educated professional, and being fought all the way.

It’s a process that still continues. Even with the professional nursing corps, male nurses are often paid more than female ones. Why? And nurses, particularly female ones, are victims of assault way too often. It needs to stop. We need to take women seriously, stop squashing them, stop trying to shove them back into the kitchen unless they want to be there. Stop killing them.

Then we can truly celebrate International Women’s Day.

Spit & Polish is now available on book sites in ebook and paperback format, and through your local bookstore. It also can be ordered through Somewhat Grumpy Press directly. Why not also check out the other books published through Somewhat Grumpy Press? Lots of good reading to be found…

An Excerpt from Spit & Polish


A little taste to encourage you to run right out and pre-purchase Spit & Polish while the ebook remains on pre-release sale. It’s available on many platforms. The paperback will be released February 29, 2024.

Nightingale Pledge, 1935

 

“I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practise my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping, and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavour to aid the physician in his work, and as a ‘missioner of health’ I will dedicate myself to devoted service to human welfare.”

Ruth dragged her feet up the stairs of the nursing residence, almost tripping on the risers. She was so tired. A long day of classes and reception duty hit her. At least she didn’t have to ring the front doorbell—the thought of having to wake one of the housemothers terrified her. The students called them “dragons” for a reason.

Tiptoeing down the hallway, Ruth opened her door and started to undress and put away her uniform. She carefully took off her apron and cuffs, placing the cuffs on the windowsill and hanging her apron over the radiator. She had a spot on the chest of her uniform, darn it. At least the blue and white striped material seemed to wash easily. She’d have to sponge that out before class tomorrow. She was too tired to think about it now. She cringed as her warped wardrobe door shrieked. Everything else lay silent, all of her fellow students asleep or on their night shifts. It appeared both eerie and lovely at night. Her window overlooked Lake Ontario, and the water glistened, flat as glass. She laid her black stockings carefully over the chair beside her bed and gazed out at the September moonlight. 

Suddenly, her door banged open, and a terrifying shape filled it.

“What in the name of all that’s good and holy are you doing?” The apparition, a grey-haired medusa in a long flannel nightgown, waved its arms at her. “Can’t you be quieter? Some of us want to sleep!” It turned and stumbled along the hall, thumping its feet in its hard-soled slippers.

Ruth fell back on her bed, heart racing.

Her friend Betty peeked her head around the corner. She grinned. “I see you’ve met the new matron.”

Ruth pulled Betty into the room and pulled her door almost closed. “Who WAS that?”

“Shhh. She’ll hear you. That’s our new supervisor,” Betty whispered. “Her name is Mrs. Graham, but she wants us to call her Matron. Some British thing. She trained there.”

Ruth rolled her eyes. “She scared me half to death! I’m trying to be so quiet!”

“I didn’t hear a thing until she stomped in. She’s afraid of prowlers or something. Ann got lambasted before you got in. She seems to have it in for first years.”

“Oh great,” moaned Ruth. “Just what I need is someone to yell at me unexpectedly. I thought I left that back at home with my father.”

Betty nodded, put her hand on Ruth’s. “It won’t be that bad, surely. After all, she can’t be everywhere, can she?”

“I hope not. That hair!” Ruth permitted herself another quiet laugh. “She looked like she’d been electrified!”

On the joys (?) of revision


Photo by KoolShooters on Pexels.com

“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”
―Bernard Malamud

So went the quotation in my email from Writers.com. (I highly recommend this newsletter, btw) I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, adjusting prose to make it clearer and more bright, to enhance the emotions in your first draft, to make your words sing – that can be pleasurable. I personally like the hack and burn part of revision, too, where you look through your tome and realize this bit AND that bit, and also the other bit, could really be thrown to the wolves (or if decent, tucked into a file for use later).

But I am licking my wounds a bit. My publisher has sent out advance review copies of my book to people and of course (probably my fault as I was pushing for release), it went out with multiple typos in it. People have noticed and commented. Sigh. One or two (you know who you are, DP!) helped me find the more egregious ones. Bless them.

Since it was exposed to some of the masses, my publisher and I have gone back and forth and back and forth, correcting things — but I’m certain little errors remain. I’m equally sure some eagle-eyed readers will find them and helpfully point them out to me so that I can revise it again.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that I will hire a copyeditor for my next book. Editors are good things (of course I would say this, being one myself). They can see things that the author misses in all sorts of places. I love my editing work. It gives me the chance to REALLY read a story, see it in its wholeness, try to help the author bring forward what they want. I’ve had great pleasure in my editing jobs – I do mostly developmental and line editing, which doesn’t require me to copyedit. Phew.

Because I realize the limit of my capabilities. I am not a copyeditor. I need helpful eyes for this. And my glasses aren’t doing it.

So, just to liven things up a bit, I will send a surprise to anyone who spots a typo in the officially released Spit & Polish book. Send me a message here, and I’ll contact you. What will it be, the surprise? Well, you will just have to wait and see…

Meantime, why not join me today, February 27, 2024, for an interview about the book and the writing process (I imagine there will be some shuffling in shame about errors), today at 4 pm AT, 5PM Eastern, 12noon Pacific on Youtube, Facebook, etc. Or you can watch me and the wonderful Anne O’Connell of OC Publishing on her YouTube channel later. It’s so generous of Anne to have me on. If you watch the show, look through her other interviews, too. She is a very generous and interested interviewer.

And don’t forget to pre-order your discount ebook before the official release date of February 29, 2924. After that things will be full price… Check out Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, and more. The paperback will be available February 29th everywhere – just ask your local store to order in a copy for you. Or you can order directly from Somewhat Grumpy Press, too. I do hope you enjoy it!

Stretching umbilical cords, or the joy/sorrow of letting kids go


I woke this morning thinking about how my kids, the hearts of my heart, are about as far away from me and each other that they can be, geographically. One is in Europe, one in Australia, one back in Kingston while I am in Vancouver. It reminded me of the imagery I tried to share with them (but of course they found repellent, because, kids) that I can almost feel the leftover umbilical threads tugging at times, especially when I am worrying about them, or when I know life is being challenging for them. It’s a weird thing.

I raised them to be independent, to question the status quo, to be unafraid of trying new things. This has resulted in them being all over the world. I miss them, still find such joy in their contact with me. I have fantasies of them all being together, chatting and laughing with each other again. I used to love listening to them talk amongst themselves. This is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

But that’s the thing – you’ve got to let those kids go. Let them vanish and like that old tiresome quote: If you love something, set it free. If it is yours, it will come back to you. It’s risky, though. They may never come back. One of mine hasn’t. Still have that psychic umbilical attachment, though, even if these days it is more of an ache.

In my upcoming book, Spit & Polish, my main character, Ruth, is dying to leave her small town and move to the slightly bigger city of Kingston, ON. She’s bored, the local boys are mean, and she dreads having nothing to do but wash diapers for her always increasing brood of siblings.

In that time period, the years after WW2, choices for single women were few. All the jobs that had opened up for women during the war were closed with a snap. Men needed the jobs, everyone thought. Women should get married and have babies. And endlessly support their husbands, no matter how unfulfilling that might be. Ruth, at her young age of 18, didn’t love that option. She wanted an alternative.

Cloyne in the 1930’s

But her parents wanted her nearby, of course. At least until she got married. Which is why Ruth was so surprised to find her mother supporting her to go away to nursing school. It meant a very real increase of work for her mother, and Ruth is frequently guilty about her escape. (Not so much that she wants to go home, though…)

While nursing might seem a stereotypical choice for women now (I beg to differ, having had a very varied and exciting career as a nurse myself), it certainly wasn’t then. Nursing was just becoming respectable, and nurses were continually being portrayed as being easy, loose, a bit tawdry. Nursing schools were incredibly strict to help control this image, and students were held to a very high standard for behaviour. Of course there were a few who snuck out after hours, misbehaved with patients, followed doctors like eager puppies. Ruth doesn’t dare. She knows she is there on a short leash from her father, and she is terrified of losing her route to what she hopes is a satisfying career.

It doesn’t help that challenges are thrown at her every time she steps just a wee bit out of line. Still, she keeps on, gradually becoming braver as she falls more in love with nursing. It gives her strength to stand up for her choice, even as another pregnancy makes her guilt about not being at home to help her mother. Fortunately, Mrs. Maclean is willing to do the letting go, to allow herself to accept the risk of losing Ruth forever.

I’ll be doing an interview about the book with OC Publishing, on their Author’s Journey sites : YouTube, and Facebook, on Tuesday February 27. I’m delighted to have a chance to visit with Anne O’Connell, who has been a tremendous supporter of writers and writing.

Spit & Polish officially launches February 29th. It’s on sale (the ebook) for pre-order until then on Kobo, Amazon, Apple Books and more. Why not grab a copy and see what happens to Ruth in this first in a series of books on Ruth, nursing education, medical care, and Kingston, ON in 1946.

Self-promotion, or why I’ll never succeed in politics


This meme showed up on Facebook this morning and it made me laugh out loud. I’m battling with self-promotion. When I wrote my first book, Recycled Virgin, and launched it right in the middle of the pandemic, I just couldn’t force myself to do any promotion. Life felt too grim. So my first novel sunk gently into the muck. It is still available, and I think it’s worth a read, if I do say so myself.

Some other people say so, too – one Goodreads review that warmed my heart says: “Recycled Virgin” by D.A. Brown is an intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking exploration of a fictional premise that brilliantly reimagines a cornerstone of religious history. In this intricately woven narrative, the author takes readers on a captivating journey that questions traditional narratives, challenges preconceived notions, and offers a fresh perspective on a timeless story.

Hmm. I seem to have firmly stuck my promotional hat on. Those of you who read this blog, (and cheers to all of you who do. I really appreciate you!) have been somewhat awash in messages about the upcoming launch of Spit and Polish. I’m truly sorry if you feel overwhelmed. It’s all about the search engines…

Publishing a book these days is quite a feat. It’s easy to create a book, but will anyone ever read it? There are so many DIY’d books out there, many of them only responsible for the unnecessary killing of trees, it becomes hard to make an impact. There’s a sweet spot where the behemoth Amazon actually takes notice of your humble book and starts promoting you. This makes a huge difference, lifts your book temporarily out of the mire, shines a bit of effort from them upon it. All those “Amazon Best Sellers” manage the algorithm by finessing pre-orders, sending out piles of notices to their mailing lists (obtained by offering ‘freebies’ for a name). I’m simply not good at that.

I’d like to think my prose will pull people in and my book will take off independent of advertising, but realistically, I know that just ain’t so. So I’m writing this blog, and we are offering the ebook on the cheap for pre-order – won’t make me rich, but it might just make me noticeable.

But I really hate promoting myself. I can promote you and what you do with great ease – will gladly cheer on your books (especially if I’ve edited them) (stop it! More self-promotion!) But ask me to sell myself, and somehow, I’m just not convincing. When I did run for politics many years ago, I failed utterly in the “call people and ask for money” phase. My burgeoning career failed so promptly there was barely a ripple.

So please forgive me as I thrash about promoting my book. I’m kind of proud of it. I loved writing it and researching for it. I’m working on the sequel as we speak. I’d like it if you enjoy it, too.

I have had a sweet review posted by an early reviewer on LibraryThing: I love books where I identify with the characters, and Ruth was a very sympathetic and resilient character, with all the trials she went through. The author is planning to continue Ruth’s story in a sequel, so I will look forward to that. Highly recommended!.

And on Tuesday, I’ll be doing an interview with the inimitable Anne O’Connell from OC Publishing so you can watch me struggle to self-promote, and hear more about the book. Check it out (along with many other excellent interviews) on her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@OCPublishing

Being a nursing student, or getting by with a little help from your friends


Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com

There are lots of books and stories about the trauma of training to become a medical doctor. There are fewer about nursing education, for some reason, unless you count the romances and Cherry Ames-type books. Apparently nurses have an easier time of it.

I beg to differ.

I’ve looked at nursing education from both sides now…as a student and teacher. Anyway you slice it, it’s tough. In my character Ruth Maclean‘s time, nursing was largely a process of training young women to obey. In my time as a student, some years later, we were initially forced to obey, and then after the first couple of years, were gently allowed to think for ourselves, a bit. I still entered practice completely green, but with an expanded view of my own competence. How I pity my poor patients from back then!

In every case, the amount of knowledge needed to become a competent nurse was huge. Huge and unappreciated. Nurses had to be able both to assess their patients and to persuade doctors to take the issues they found seriously. This was more difficult than it would seem. Doctors also have their image to maintain, and often that meant putting down the nurses they counted on to keep the patient alive.

And the training was gruelling. I’ve tried to convey that a bit in Spit and Polish. Exacting expectations for everything from dress to bed-making to the medical treatments made learning nerve-wracking for the average student. Shift work and the endless demands to clean as well as care for the people in the beds could throw a student off track. Poor Ruth is less competent at physical tasks than her fellow students – largely, I think, because of having to do piles of housework at her crowded and noisy home. She had a tendency to be slap-dash, and that just was not acceptable for a nursing student. So she was called into her supervisor’s office far too often for the school’s comfort, and eventually banished to build up her skills at the Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

Fortunately for Ruth, and my story, she took this admonition in good spirit and vowed to do better. But key to her progress were the friends she made along the way, the supportive other students, the senior nurses who took her under their wings, the friendly physicians who helped her learn new skills.

And that’s the key point about nursing education — the only way to survive it is with friends and colleagues who can prop you up when things get bad. I was fortunate to have a roommate and friend, Paula, who was by my side as we trudged through our degree. We studied for the RN exams together, sitting on a sunbaked roof in Kingston, ON, then removed the gains through some fairly serious celebration afterwards. (We both passed.)

Before that, we saw each other through disastrous relationships, unfriendly profs, bad placements, annoying exams. We fought off the “nurses are easy” teasing, became professionals. When we got our first jobs, we rallied to support each other after bad shifts where patients died or head nurses snarled or doctors were nasty. Her friendship was invaluable.

It’s for that reason I decided Ruth should go to the Kingston General Hospital School of Nursing, a place whose alumni are still close friends after more than 60 years. They still look after one another, still meet regularly. It’s pretty impressive — but it also speaks of the shared experiences they had, the support they gave one another all along.

I hope you enjoy reading about Ruth and her nursing classmates and their trials and tribulations. If you act now and pre-order Spit and Polish before it launches on February 29, you can get a discounted price. And keep an eye out for the sequel, expected soon.

Medical progress, quackery, and the profit motive


The last couple of days I’ve been disabled with back pain. This is new for me as my multiple sclerosis means most of the time I rarely feel any pain. Anywhere. Which can make for missing some essential things going on in my body. Right now I am wondering if it is a kidney stone or a bulging disc or I’m just generally falling apart but I have places to go and things to do and I haven’t got time for this.

Onto YouTube I go, for helpful (?) advice about self-diagnosis. It wasn’t helpful. I don’t have a doc to go see so the only alternative to self-diagnosis is sitting in the ER for hours which would likely aggravate everything with not much reward. SO YouTube it is.

After listening to a relatively sane doc tell me how to relieve things, the other videos cued up. The first one was about faecal impaction (it must sense my age and state of decrepitude). According to the handsome charlatan, drinking water or eating fibre or even exercise won’t help this – you have to pay for this doc’s special advice. (She was “once on a prestigious medical faculty” – I’d be interested in knowing where she is now, as fraudsters regularly assign names of people that don’t exist to their miracle cures. I’d look it up but sitting is painful.) He went on about how bits of stool linger in your bowel for years – that old chestnut. It just ain’t true. I do wish some of these people would look inside a bowel now and again. Or prep for a colonoscopy.

It all reminded me of the tuberculosis treatments back in the time of my upcoming book, Spit and Polish. Back in 1946, tuberculosis was common. Overcrowding, traveling to places where it was epidemic during the war, poverty, poor diet — all of these created a happy environment for mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacterium that causes TB is a nasty wee thing, designed to defeat elimination. The cells have a waxy coating, which makes them resistant to drying out and to attack by antibiotics. Fortunately, it reproduces relatively slowly, so it isn’t as wildly infective as say, Covid, but once you have it, it is the devil to get rid of. Our usual immune system has a very hard time digesting the cells. And it can lay latent for years. My father had TB in 1946. He survived with no long term effects, but when he was going through chemotherapy in the 1980’s, those rotten little cells started coming alive again.

TB is often in the lungs, but as you will read in my novel, it can infect any part of the body, including the kidney, spine and brain. Back in 1946, there weren’t any antibiotics widely available that effectively treated it, so TB patients were put through all sorts of torment as their docs tried to keep ahead of the disease.

The chief therapy was bedrest and better nutrition, sunbathing and moderate exercise. That could go on for years, and did, in sanatoria all over the world. This was expensive and money was needed, so more interventions were invented to apply for grants. Things like inhalants like mercury and paraffin were tried, to ease coughing. They often eased patients into the next world.

Frequently patients with bone involvement were placed in traction or casted to keep the bones in place while a hoped for reconstruction could take place. Patients could remain casted for months, which led to other problems.

Surgical approaches were used, aimed at letting the lung “rest” and cure itself-and, as the mycobacterium tuberculosis are aerobes, so removing oxygen from the area would help slow its growth. Surgical treatments could be temporary, like a created pneumothorax, or permanent, like a Semb’s strip, phrenic nerve crushing, rib removal, lung collapses and resections and the like. Needless to say, patients who experienced these treatments were forever deformed and visible. This made it difficult for them to live in a tuberculosis-afraid society.

Add the prejudice that some types of people (I’ll leave you to imagine who, but hint hint, they are assumed to cause every bad thing that happens to them) were predisposed to TB, and no one even wanted the affected to deliver the paper. It was a bit like the early stages of AIDS.

Fortunately for the surgically maimed and those awaiting maiming, streptomycin came on the scene, with initial miraculous results. Other antibiotics followed, and combinations of antibiotics that worked well against the tiny foe.

Unfortunately, antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis is now on the rise, so the future surgically maimed may yet be waiting in the wings.

Want to know more? See my upcoming novel, available February 29, 2024.

Beautiful Kingston, Ontario: Antiquitate Civilitate Humanitate


(A Civil and Creative Community with a Proud Past)

Photo by Rasheeque Ahnaf (Piash) on Pexels.com

That slogan in English reads a bit like something from Winnie the Pooh, with all the capitals, but I’ve got to admit it does sound like Kingston.

Kingston was the first capital of the United Province of Canada. It is filled with limestone buildings, hospitals, universities, military structures, and prisons. We used to have a statue of local boy Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s First Prime Minister, but his history is at best mixed, so he’s been moved to think over his crimes in the local Cemetery. We still have his house from the 1840’s and you can go tour it and marvel at how the elegant of that time lived.

The area has been settled for hundreds of centuries, acting first as a home for Iroquois, and then for the “five nations” formed of Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Wyandot peoples. These residents traded furs with the French – beavers were everywhere and their fur much prized. Following this, the French and English traded ownership for years.

Kingston is ideally suited as a defence spot, situated on the shores of Lake Ontario, the end of the Rideau Canal, and near the end of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Various armies and navies have resided here, and there are leftovers. We have Fort Henry and Martello towers, and the military university, Royal Military College. Many of these places have been in use since the War of 1812, where Kingston played a significant role.

So Kingston was a friendly place for the military for decades. After WW2, Kingston’s Queen’s University opened up so many spaces for returning soldiers to get upgraded education, they had to be put up in tents all over the place. The population of the city increased madly, and I can only imagine the trials and tribulations that the local government went through.

In my book, Spit and Polish, I deliberately focused on the immediate post-war period. So many books talk about the war, but it’s often like those stories where the prince and princess marry and live happily ever after. I wanted to see the city coming back to life after losing so many of its population to the war effort.

Ruth has just dipped her toe into Kingston life. She’s coming from the tiny town of Cloyne, about an hour and a half north of the city. She’s so tasked with her nursing school work she barely sees everything else (except stores that sell new stockings!), but she already knows she loves the place. She does go to local eateries and shops, and you’ll see their names in the pages of the book. She also rides the beleaguered Wolfe Island Ferry, which was actually running at the time.

Cloyne overlook

In the current time, Kingston has a vibrant arts community, several colleges and universities, innovative research departments and businesses, and a wonderful climate. I can understand why Ruth loved it.

See Spit and Polish, launching February 29, 2024, for more about this enchanting city and the time.