News and views from here and there

I'm a newspaper junky. We subscribe to three daily papers, The Globe and Mail and The National Post (both are major Canadian papers) and The Times Colonist, published in Victoria, BC. We get it for the local news. Marshal Mcluhan, famous for his books and studies of the mass media, once remarked. "Start reading the newspaper from the back and work to the front." Because, he said, the good news is at the back and the bad news at the front.

I don't know about other readers' habits but I read letters to the editor first, then check the editorials of the day, then the articles on the Op-Ed page. This is a great start to my day. Then I turn to the front page and work to the back. I choose what I want to read. The Globe and Mail is scanned first and special sections are saved for later in the day. The Times Colonist I go through over lunch. I have a cup of tea and The National Post at four o'clock when my writing day is over.

When my husband and I travel I always pick up a newspaper. He thinks I'm nuts but it's such a tiny obsession and not life threatening as I continue my peculiar ways. As a writer, I find all sorts of interesting items to stir my creative muse.

For instance, The National Post features daily items from Samuel Pepys' Diary, and they make wonderful reading. Here is Samuel Pepys on September 4, 1664. "I have had a bad night's rest to-night, not sleeping well, as my wife observed, and once or twice she did wake me, and I thought myself to be mightily bit with fleas, and in the morning she chid her mayds for not looking the fleas a-days. But, when I rose, I found that it is only the change of the weather from hot to cold, which, as I was two winters ago, do stop my pores, and so my blood tingles and itches all days all over my body, and so continued to-day all the day long just as I was then, and if it continues to be so cold I fear I must come to the same pass, but sweating cured me then, and I hope, and I am told, will this also."

Samuel was cold on September 4th. There were years of cold weather during his time when crops failed leaving the peasant farmers destitute and starving. Global cooling.

Fleas. Writers of historical fiction never mention fleas yet they abounded in those bygone days. And we never mention bed bugs or lice. Why spoil a romance with details of no interest to our readers? Our stories are about the wealthy, the rich, the famous and infamous who have household staff to attend to their bathing requirements. My historical romance, A Very Dfficult Man, takes place in 1854. By then the flush toilet had been invented. And wasn't that a great invention? Along with boilers for heating water for bathing.

I hope you have purchased my book, A Very Difficult man. My second book from Cerridwen Press, Isabelle's Diary, is set in the present time in the old Welsh spa town, Llandrindod Wells. Check out my web site. www.anitbirt.com for a little blurb and an excerpt.

Happy Reading

Anita