Something Like Love: A Literary Podcast

Hello and welcome to Something Like Love … in 2006 I spent six weeks in a cabin in the northern Georgia woods at the Hambidge Retreat Centre, and that part of the US was another world to me. I saw a black rat snake stretch right across the width of a road. I drank sweet tea and ate chitlin and grits. I saw nazi memorabilia at flea markets. And I met Billy Redden, the man who played the part of the banjo playing boy in the movie "Deliverance". Sidenote: I’ve since learned that he wasn’t playing the banjo at all … there was an adult playing it for him in that scene. 

In this episode I’ll share the fictional story I wrote while I was in Rabun Gap, Georgia. I called it "Rabun County," and it was published in my short story collection Listen, Honey, published in 2012 by DC Books. Easy to find online, if you fancy getting yourself a copy.

To set the mood, I kick things off with a little blue grass.

Thanks for tuning in! I wish you a Georgia peach kind of Day.   

Hello and welcome to Something Like Love. I was born and raised in Saskatchewan, and much of my family still lives in that oft over-looked province – if I had a dollar for all the times people have told me they’ve just “driven through” on the TransCanada, I’d be a wealthy gal. 

I spent most of my adolescence in Meadow Lake. I grew up in the forest and in the crystal clear lakes inside the Meadow Lake Provincial Park. As a child, I remember a bear running through the school yard at recess, and the students were stampeded back into the safety of the school. Or is that a false memory? A dream? I’d be interested in hearing from you if you too attended Jubilee School – the round elementary school -  and remember the bear at recess too.  

In this week’s episode I’m going to bring you along on a road trip through my home province via an essay that’s had a long and varied life. Firstly, it appeared in a long gone but lovely magazine called NeWest Review as “Road Trip: Why I Write About Saskatchewan.” That was way back in 1996.

In 2009 it appeared in a book titled Country Roads: Memoirs from Rural Canada, released by Nimbus Publishing. I included it in my 2014 essay collection, I Wasn’t Always Like This, published by Signature Editions, and here it is again, with music, for you. Shout out to the marvellous Peter Mutafov for channelling Neil Young in this episode ... and to Neil Young himself, for "Harvest Moon". 

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Something Like Love. Here we are in Season 3, with travel and exploration as the theme. This week we'll spend some time in Maui. I share my essay "Haleakala Sunrise," from my essay collection "I Wasn't Always Like This," which is available almost everywhere, but you might want to check it out here: https://bookshop.org/books?keywords=leedahl     (bookshop.org is a great place to order books)

This week's episode includes a fractured family, a pre-dawn trip up to the Haleakala volcano to see the sunrise, and a bike back down on mountain bikes. There's also barbed wire, and a brief Shellified take on "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

Thanks for listening, and have a beautiful week.

This week Something Like Love visits, Bali, where I travelled with my son in 2009, and we met an Indonesian tailor named Mowgly, travelled into the countryside on motorbike, and participated in a celebration of the Hindu goddess Sariswati. The short essay I share this week is titled "Once Upon a Time in Bali: Adventures on a Mother/Son Vacation," and it appeared in my essay collection I Wasn't Always Like This (Signature Editions).

I met Santa Monica writer and Pushcart Prize nominee Donna Conrad in an internet cafe in Sanur, and we became quick friends. Years later I travelled to California to help Donna edit her novel. I also edited her delightful children's picture book, How I  Sent My Hug Around the World. You can find this gorgeous hardcover - illustrated by Balinese artist  Monez Gusmang - here:  https://www.amazon.com/How-Sent-Hug-Around-World/dp/0985245719

I hope you'll check this week's episode out, and go easy, Friends. 

Hello Friends. I’m Shelley Leedahl, a multi-genre writer in lovely Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, and this is Season 3 of my literary podcast, Something Like Love. I’ve always loved to explore, so I’m feeling the pain during these restrictive, pandemic times and thus have decided to dedicate Season 3 to travel and exploration through poetry, fiction, and essays. 

You’re warmly invited to join me each week on international adventures from my past, and I’ll share some Canadian locales too. I also promote other writer’s work and – because I just can’t help myself – I add a dash of music to the mix, too    

No passports required, no quarantine necessary. Let’s … just … do … this. 

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Today we’re Portugal bound. I was in Europe in 2013, and the extended trip was feasible because I’d arranged a home exchange with a French couple. My then-partner and I flew to Basel, Switzerland, where Chulita and Alain met us and drove us back to their home near Belfort, France. 

We had two nights with them, then they flew off to Edmonton while we settled into the Alsace region of France. By god it was glorious in the French countryside. We had a view of the Vosges Mountains, and both Germany and Switzerland were nearby. 

We zoomed to Paris on the TGV. We connected with writer friends of mine in Germany’s Black Forest, and we luxuriated in a Baden Baden spa. We visited my sister-in-law and niece in Switzerland, and we popped over to the Czech Republic for some exploring there, too. Highlights included quaint Colmar, France – la petite Venice – and visiting wineries, and running in the French countryside to the next village for morning croissants. I’m terribly fond of Europe, truth be told. 

In this episode you’ll hear me tell a story involving a near arrest at Estoril, Portugal, and a wild trip back to a Lisbon Air BnB in the back of a siren-blaring police paddywagon. I also read the essay “What I Learned About Life at the End of the World,” from my essay collection I Wasn’t Always Like This (Signature Editions). I wrote it when based in Salema, on the southern coast, after I was invited on an 8-hour hike – to the end of the world – with a 70-year-old stranger named Sigrun.

I’m also pleased to share the work of Regina, Saskatchewan writer-friend Gerry Hill, who also spent time writing in Portugal. Gerry recently launched his seventh collection of poetry, Crooked at the Far End (Radiant Press), and he graciously sent me a recording of his poem “Love Poem Contest, Second Prize.” Man, he had me at the title alone.

I usually create all the music for this podcast series, but this week I couldn’t resist adding some Fado – hey, the theme’s Portugal, after all. Thanks to Alexandre Bateiras for “Variações Sobre um tema Melancólico,” and Creative Commons for this license: 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Next week we’re going to Bali!

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If you enjoyed this travel essay and wish to read more, please order a copy of I Wasn’t Always Like This online here http://www.signature-editions.com/index.php/books/single_title/i_wasnt_always_like_this , on Amazon, or from your favourite bookstore. 

Hello Friends. I’m Shelley Leedahl, a multi-genre writer in lovely Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, and this is Season 3 of my literary podcast, Something Like Love. I’ve always loved to explore, so I’m feeling the pain during these restrictive, pandemic times and thus have decided to dedicate Season 3 to travel and exploration through poetry, fiction, and essays. 

You’re warmly invited to join me each week on international adventures from my past, and I’ll share some Canadian locales too. I also promote other writer’s work and – because I just can’t help myself – I add a dash of music to the mix, too    

No passports required, no quarantine necessary.  Let’s … just … do … this. 

 __________

Sometimes you write something and it sits in your drawer for years. Decades. That’s been the case for the six postcard stories I'm sharing in my podcast, Something Like Love, today. Each brief story is set in Mérida, on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. 

I was in this colonial city working with nine other Canadians and ten Mexicans – equal parts writers and photographers – for a month-long exchange in 2002. A year later the Mexican artists came Canada way … we spent six weeks together on our individual projects - and collaborations - at the Banff Centre. 

I hold these two experiences close to my heart, not only for the art that was made through them, but also because of the enduring connections they spawned. Lifetime friendships. 

Mérida's known for its rich Mayan history and culture. We arrived just after Hurricane Isidore had devastated the area; the graceful city I'd toured many times online was not the city I arrived in, yet as I piled into a taxi with a few other Canadians, I had the distinct sense that for for the first time in my thirty-nine years, I was home. I got a visceral sense of the city’s passionate heartbeat: people danced in the streets. Hell, I danced in the streets. 

I was struck by the city’s unique, S-shaped benches, called confidentes, silla tu y yo, or de los enamorados – for those in love. These binary benches are connected by their handles on opposite sides, so when you sit down you're facing the other person.

A legend exists about a father whose daughter was being courted by a young man in the village. As a condition of their courthship, the jealous father asked the couple to venture only as far as the park benches. They accepted, but the father then realized that the traditional park bench gave them plenty of opportunity to be physically close, so he decided to crate the silla tu y yo, which allowed them to speak each other and look into each other’s eyes while maintaining a discrete distance. 

I was amazed at how openly passionate couples - of all ages - were on these confidentes and on regular park benches throughout the city. Hugging, kissing, stroking … well, you get the picture. As a rule, you don’t see this in Canada.

I teamed up with renowned Mexican photographer Gerardo Montiel Klint for a project. Gerardo photographed six of these amorous couples, and I learned first names and occupations. From this, I constructed a fictional story for each of them. All these years later, I'm finally sharing those very short stories and the people that inspired them. 

In this week's episode I'm delighted to also include a Mérida poem by my dear friend and fellow Canada-Mexico participant, Victoria's Maleea Acker. Maleea's poem, "Calles de Mérida a las Tres de la Mañana," is from her remarkable book The Reflecting Pool, published by Pedlar Press. Maleea has a new poetry collection forthcoming in 2022, and I very much look forward to reading it.   

I normally create all the music for my podcast, but this week I used salsa from creative commons … the song is "Montuno: Evening Mood "by Dee Yan-Key from Tribe of Noise . Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: http://creativecommons.

Hello Friends. I’m Shelley Leedahl, a multi-genre writer in lovely Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, and this is Season 3 of my literary podcast, Something Like Love. 

I’ve always loved to explore, so I’m feeling the pain during these restrictive, pandemic times, and thus have decided to dedicate Season 3 to travel and exploration through poetry, fiction, and essays. 

You’re warmly invited to join me each week on international adventures from my past, and I’ll share some Canadian locales, too. I also promote other writers' work and – because I just can’t help myself – I add a dash of music to the mix, too    

No passports required, no quarantine necessary. You don’t even need to buckle in. Let’s … just … do … this. 

 _____

My work often centres around a strong sense of place, and I’ve done much of my writing at retreats in Canada, the US, Mexico, and Europe. Back in the day, when I lived two provinces to the east, I sometimes used my parents’ former home at Manitou Beach, Saskatchewan, as a writing retreat, and it’s there that I wrote the short story "The Land of Healing Waters."

It’s a fictional story set at the popular mineral spa in that iconic prairie community, and it’s the final story in my collection Orchestra of the Lost Steps, published by Thistledown Press. In this episode I introduce you to quiet, widowed Nona, and her new friend, effervescent Chris.

 My parents now live in Watrous, a few miles down the highway from Manitou Beach. I’ve dedicated  this episode to them, and I kick it off with "The Tennessee Waltz ".
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This show is written, read and produced by me, Shelley Leedahl, but I occasionally have a little help. Huge thanks to Peter Mutafov for his lovely contribution with the violin this week, and equally large thanks to Jeanne Marie de Moissac from Biggar, SK, who reads her prairie-set poem,  "A Mixing," from her book Slow Curve. 

If you've enjoyed this show, please share it with someone, and thank you, from all the corners of my heart, for listening. 

Hello Friends. I’m Shelley Leedahl, a multi-genre writer in lovely Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, and this is Season 3 of my literary podcast, Something Like Love. I’ve always loved to explore, so I’m feeling the pain during these restrictive, pandemic times and thus have decided to dedicate Season 3 to travel and exploration through poetry, fiction, and essays. 

You’re warmly invited to join me each week on international adventures from my past, and I’ll share some Canadian locales too. I also promote other writer’s work and – because I just can’t help myself – I add a dash of music to the mix, too    

No passports required, no quarantine necessary. You don’t even need to buckle in. Let’s just put our walkin' boots on, and  do this.
_____

If you’ve tuned in on St. Patrick’s Day, the day this episode first aired, good on ya. I’ve got a wee bit of the Irish in me. My great great great grandfather on my mom’s side – John Faris – was born in County Cavan, Ireland, in 1787

Now I’ve never been to that part of the country, but I did spend a week writing at a self-made retreat at a monastery south of Dublin, and I befriended a nun who took me to a pub … of course we raised a glass of Guiness together. (Sidenote: I’m more of a pale lager gal, I don’t even like Guiness, but when in Ireland … )

I bought a green hoody in Dublin, with “Ireland” blazened across it in white lettering. I wear it one day a year – St. Patrick’s Day. And I wear it proudly. 

What I remember most about Ireland is wishing I had someone there with me to experience it. I’m impressed by those who travel alone around the world – good on them – but I’ve done enough solo travel to know it’s not my jam. 

One of the best things about my Irish experience was meeting a fellow poet, Pádraig J. Daly, an Augustinian priest at the monastery, and a fine scribe.  His poetry collections include, Out of Silence, The Voice of the Hare, The Last Dreamers, The Other Sea, Clinging to the Myth, Afterlife, and God in Winter. Pádraig also translates from both the Irish language and Italian. In this episode I share his reading of his moving poem "Time of Peace," from his book Afterlife, which first aired on this podcast: https://www.podcasts.ie/featured-writers/featured-poets/padraig-j-daly/

I also read five poems I wrote in Ireland, which appeared in my book The House of the Easily Amused.

Finally, what's St. Patrick's Day without an  Irish proverb? "Everything will be alright in the end … if it’s not alright, it’s not the end. "

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Friends. Go easy.