tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16643193707062045322012-03-02T15:39:26.946-08:00I am a writer and lighthouse keeper near Tofino, B.C., Canada. When Life is tough, for a friend or myself, I often rally with the expression: Onwords! Upwords! hence the title of this blog. At one brief point in my previous career in publishing, I called myself Wayword Promotions and helped colleagues figure out publishing contracts, organize reading tours and the like. Now I'm relaunching my own writing career. Onwords!Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.comBlogger191100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-82589698481582381432012-02-15T11:59:00.000-08:002012-02-15T11:59:06.354-08:00

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Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-10591220175153033222012-02-12T10:10:00.000-08:002012-02-12T10:13:17.092-08:00

In this, the fifth excerpt  from The Village of Many Hats (ISBN: 978-0-88982-284-9, March 2012:$9.95), Gina has begun her work as a milliner's apprentice and all-round helper at Madame D'Oiseaux' gift shop in Silverado. Although I love hats, most of my small collection are meant for a cold and snowy winter climate, not the downpours or gale force winds of my lighthouse life! What I didn't

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-7316976490787068092012-02-08T05:48:00.000-08:002012-02-08T05:48:07.415-08:00

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Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-3781487122929094082012-02-05T09:52:00.000-08:002012-02-05T10:05:45.025-08:00

Children and adults notice different things and organize what they know into different categories of logic or usefulness, I think. Children listen to stories about how someone was found, dead or alive, human or animal, after a heroic or futile struggle for survival. These stories or the actual sights (a dead heifer  with her first calf protruding because nobody competent found her in time to

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-3741998401076639642012-02-01T13:30:00.000-08:002012-02-01T13:30:06.789-08:00

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Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-91911996158087940042012-01-29T14:44:00.000-08:002012-01-29T14:44:34.628-08:00

The Village of Many Hats is is a novella for 8-11 year olds which is told from the point of view of a nine year old character, Gina. She and her family live in Silverado, a mountain village which used to be prosperous but which has now fallen on hard economic times. Silverado is more than just the name brand of a truck! For me, it combines one of the early names for present-day New Denver, El

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-74056483687506718912011-12-12T11:43:00.000-08:002011-12-12T11:51:04.915-08:00

                                                     Some babies cry when they’re born but I think I must have emerged singing.  To the untrained ear, my yowling might have sounded like that of any generic baby.  But I’ve never stopped humming, scatting or making my own versions of joyful noise ever since.  I sang when I hoed the long rows of potatoes.  I sang when I rode our Percheron horse

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-25382300212496507622011-10-15T16:13:00.000-07:002011-10-15T16:18:12.128-07:00

In Praise of LibrariansThe first librarian I ever met drove a massive white bookmobile he named Parnassus.  The librarian’s name was Howard Overend and I was a rural elementary  student from the two-room Transpine School in Cecil Lake. I loved books as much as horses and there were never enough of them in my small world. At least my parents had a three shelf bookcase but most of the hardcovers

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-68107744873599206202011-08-03T15:23:00.000-07:002011-08-03T15:23:18.464-07:00

I haul in seaweed, save some under a tarp, arrange the rest under my asparagus and tomatoes, suppressing the eager growth of weeds and saving water loss due to wind, more than anything. Seaweed is a gift here, not like some stations where the location of the lighthouses brings in vast swaths of it to the shorelines. The bears of Estevan Point love going out and munching on the generous drifts of

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-33663224418754379892011-06-30T12:15:00.000-07:002011-06-30T12:18:32.516-07:00

  Tomorrow is Canada's 144th birthday. We are much more festive and jolly about July 1st than, say, 40 years ago when friends and I were threatened with eviction from a pub because we sang Happy Birthday to Canada at midnight on June 30th. The cranky bartender at the Fort Hotel in Fort St. John hated hippies, I suspect, even home-grown long-haired ones of both genders who all had jobs for the

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-11594770699927717722011-06-03T08:47:00.000-07:002011-06-03T08:47:31.315-07:00

"I'm not afraid to use words like 'wonderful.' Sometimes it's the only word you can find when you're high on the world.  Robert Genn (from my Polestar Planner, a daybook without which I am lost, even on Lennard Island's 19 hectares) I've been back a full week since leaving the island on May 3rd, bound for Book Tour #3, beginning at the Village Bookstore in Bellingham, Washington. I read Jim

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-11168109005922830682011-04-30T14:46:00.000-07:002011-04-30T14:46:24.851-07:00

Rachel Carson has said, "There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature---the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter." This comforts me in times of crisis and yet, and yet.... Like the tax deadline (see previous post), which is today, election times rolls around for us all and I have launched my appeal, my rant, my call to action, sending out a

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-91457344392416893462011-03-31T12:40:00.000-07:002011-03-31T12:42:44.921-07:00

I have the fondest memory of my Dad holing up in the basement, from which a cloud of blue smoke and colourful profanities wafted up for several days. It was income tax time and Dad went head to head with the Prime Minister of the day, determined not to pay “that bloody ......” or “that smarmy ....” a cent more than absolutely necessary to keep the Canadian safety net shipshape.           Since

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-55364143206812082392011-03-20T15:46:00.000-07:002011-03-20T15:59:25.816-07:00

Post-Mexico Update Yes, my blog has ‘gone dark’ for a while and I have returned from a wonderful four weeks in the Yucatan, browner, poorer and with my betacarotene levels nicely topped up thanks to mango consumption. Mangoes, nectarines, wild raspberries and rambutan-- these are a few of my favourite fruits and I sing their praises like Julie Andrews but an octave lower.But I digress.Today I

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-44465232688191162562011-01-05T16:56:00.000-08:002011-01-05T17:57:25.208-08:00

What Really Matters on a Rocky Island  Let's not plan a formal luncheonHotdogs & buns, just the ticket.This is the fourth day of sunshine& it’s January! Rejoice! So let’s pile high the dry driftwood,these twigs, those branches, that cedar.Let’s make a strong hot fire, yes,& for dessert, some clementines. Let’s toast both eagles cuddled upout on the reef towards Japan.Another toast? Yes, please.

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-58922190675140056782010-12-12T15:37:00.000-08:002011-01-05T17:57:56.917-08:00

Every road trip I take ends up being part of my musical memory trove, as well as all the other visual and logistical and emotional memories. Add visceral, culinary, spiritual and practical richness, as in no speeding tickets! No accidents, no road rage, no negative stuff to fume about. A complete joy, call it kinesis, whatever, I call it a great road trip when I hear the opening bars of a song

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-6768632430414241242010-11-07T11:50:00.001-08:002011-01-05T17:59:22.695-08:00

Why and how writing groups make all the difference...because it’s such isolated work, staring at blank pages, or computer screens, summoning up the chutzpah to invent whole worlds not to mention banishing judgmental crows with their claws digging into my head, forming a community with other writers is an emotional and practical necessity.I attempted to write fiction in physical and virtual

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-50808673751932700212010-10-19T09:07:00.000-07:002011-01-05T17:56:50.492-08:00

Today I sing the praises of the West Kootenays, that region in the southeast of British Columbia of narrow green valleys flanked by the Monashees, the Purcells, and the Selkirks,  and nestled within are the long deep lakes, Arrow, Slocan, and Kootenay. But even more than the comfort of its plentiful hotsprings and the charm of its turn of the last century architecture and bucolic farms and

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1664319370706204532.post-63154039275827869172010-10-06T20:31:00.000-07:002011-01-05T17:58:55.122-08:00

October 3, 2010, Estevan Point Lighthouse, 82 Alpha on the VHFLatitude: 49 degrees 22 minutes 58.7 seconds NorthLongitude: 126 degrees 32 minutes 38.4 seconds WestDigital location, interestingly, varies slightly but for those with functioning GPS systems, we are at Latitude 49.382972 and Longitude 126.544028 OR Latitude 49.383333 and Longitude 126.543333.

Caroline Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14722859590249256374noreply@blogger.com0