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And it turns out to be true, if you define godliness to encompass such virtues as honesty and generosity.

Chen-Bo Zhong has previously studied people’s craving for cleanliness when prompted to think of their misdeeds, which he called the Lady MacBeth effect. (You have to admire a psychologist who names effects after literary characters, don’t you?)

Now, along with Katie Liljenquist and Adam Galinsky, he has gone on to show that clean smells make people behave better. Volunteers were place in a room that was either unscented or slightly scented with a pleasant citrus odour. They then played a game in which they had a choice as to how they would share their profits. They were told that they were the receivers in a game where senders chose how much money to share with the receiver. The amount they shared was tripled, and then the receiver decided how much to give back.

Of course there weren’t any actual senders. The point was to see what the receivers would decide to do about sending money back to the unknown senders, and if their decision would be affected by what they smelled, even though they later reported not noticing the scent or not caring about it. When the facts were in, those in the scented room looked at their $12 pot of money and sent back $5.33 on average, while people who weren’t under the influence of nice lemony smells sent back a stingy $2.81, less than a quarter of what the kindly (albeit fake) senders had sent.

Another game tested people’s willingness to volunteer or donate toward a cause. Pleasant scents increased their interest in volunteering and made them four times as willing to donate money. (However I find it interesting that money was more tractable than time.)

Chen-Bo Zhong, Vanessa Bohns and Francesca Gino also tested the effect of light on people’s virtue. In one experiment, students were either in a well lit or dim class. Then they had to report how many problems they finished on a math test, for which they were allowed to keep 50 cents per problem they reported completing. It was all on the honour system. On average all the students in both rooms finished 7.3 problems. In the bright room, the students exaggerated slightly, reporting 7.8, but in the dim room, ah there, the students claimed to have done 11.5, exaggerating by over 50%.

In another experiment, the students either wore clear or sunglasses. The students were given $6, from which they could allocate some money to an anonymous partner in another room. Students wearing clear glasses gave nearly half their money to their unknown partners, while those wearing sunglasses gave less than a third.

(Full story at Not Exactly Rocket Science)

Okay folks so here’s the conclusion: light up the U.N. and lemon scent the peace talk rooms. And all those world leaders wearing sunglasses? Take them off. Let’s see your eyes.

One more thing, seeing as how my older daughter is eleven now. When she hits adolescence, I’m only discussing where she’s been and with whom while serving her lemonade.

Lemon of Genova, Wikipedia Commons

*Monday Feb 8/10

Another summer photo for those of us in the northern hemisphere: a reminder that sun and warmth does exist!

For an exquisite winterscape see Beyond The Fields We Know.

*More Interviews

I should be writing, and have been trying, keeping my bottom glued to the chair, and my blinds closed so that I can barely see the sun and the blue sky. But barely isn’t enough. Through the tiny gaps, I still get a glimpse of sun glistening on snow, a sliver of spruce tree, a slash of blue sky. And I want to go out, I want to run away from the blank screen and walk walk walk. I’m not sure how long I can stay sitting here writing a (bad of course because it’s the first go at it) new chapter.

I’m worn out from the stress of going down to the police station yesterday. Everyone there was quite nice though occasionally looking at me as if I had three heads (or so I imagined). But my shyness was at its peak and all I could so was smile idiotically and ask the occasional question. I’d done most of my asking (thank God) on the phone. I was there to look, and I took lots of photos to refresh my memory, paralyzed as my brain was with the enormity of my nerve. Going to a cop shop! Interrupting important work! Being short among many tall and broad men and women! Oh my.

Afterward I walked west and I walked east but I’m still not done walking off the muzziness of my head. Hence my urgent desire (along with the impetus of a bad couple of pages) to unglue myself from the chair and run away, which I expect that I shall do shortly.

Here are some pictures from my walk:

click photo to enlarge

click photo to enlarge

Now, in case you’re wondering what poutine is, let me explain. It is Quebec’s contribution to fast food: french fries with melted cheese curd and gravy overtop. I do not know how an entire restaurant on chi-chi Queen W. can be devoted to it.

Speaking of chi-chi stores, this next photo was taken in a shop for hyper moms of infants and pre-schoolers. Now I admit that I was kind of one of those with my first baby. It was only with my second child and trying to write a book that I gave up on expensive kids’ shoes and went along with all the other local moms to the Payless shoe store that had opened up in my neighbourhood. But still, this store made me laugh. The following item, in case you can’t figure it out from the name, is a cap to place on a baby boy’s penis, lest he pee into your face while diapering him.

Would you buy one of these?

Okay, I’m posting this, and giving my chapter one more hearty go before I leap up and run away.

*Monday Feb 1/10



Chloe, originally uploaded by LauriePix1.

Okay, so isn’t this a cutie?

*Homework and Sewing

Yesterday I read the last 50 pages or so of the books you all recommended to me. I’ll post about that later. But today is about something else. It’s about wanting to skate and not skating because everyone had colds. It’s about doing homework with kids while sewing and not sewing very well. It’s about A being frantically busy and out of the picture all day of necessity on a day when both kids had a lot of homework that required supervision and explanation from a parent.

It’s about snapping at the girls because they (as kids do) gave me blank looks with hair hanging over eyes or fled the scene and got occupied with more pleasant tasks like decorating the science project rather than writing it up. And I couldn’t get the tension right on my sewing machines. And I was running up and downstairs reading the manual (on the computer), then looking over the sm.

It’s about intending to make cupcakes with the kids and make dinner, but instead M (my eldest) made the cupcakes on her own for the first time and A is whipping up a quick dinner. Because it is 7:36 now.

And in the end, the girls got their homework done and they learned something. I was the only parent only for a few hours, and I am so glad A is back with smiles and the good spirit that he usually has. I made a drawstring bag for M, though there were rough edges I forgot to turn under to finish them off because I wasn’t focusing on what I was doing any better than my kids were at times. Yet it’s a strong bag and serviceable.

Here it is:

It irks a part of me that the bag has so many mistakes on the inside, and yet another part knows that I don’t have time to unstitch and re-do it. I reserve that meticulousness for writing.

But should I? Where do you draw the line around artistic integrity and craftsmanship?

I had to make several calls this morning to do interviews for research. This was not fun. I am basically shy and hate to interrupt people. Worse still, my phone calls were to police officers, busy people and authority figures. You know that my previous novels took place a 100 years ago and I did all my research on my own, in libraries, watching old films, looking at photographs, studying maps. That is my kind of thing. Quietly walking my fingers along the streets of old London colour coded by Charles Booth and his associates.

I was hoping to skirt around the need to do these interviews, but my agent pinned me to the gaping hole at the climax of the novel. I don’t know how someone can be pinned to a hole, but I assure you that I was.

After the calls were made, despite that the officers were helpful and kind, I was shaky. This is not the sort of thing an introverted vegetarian is cut out for.

So I turned to the sewing machine for relief after the ordeal. Yesterday I mended my backpack but I wasn’t satisfied with the stitch. I wanted to try turning it the other way to get the repair right next to the zipper. After emptying it out, I placed it so that the body of the backpack was facing into the machine instead of away. Though it wouldn’t stuff under the arm of the machine, I thought I could somehow levitate the backpack so that it wouldn’t be too heavy a drag.

The sewing machine started all right. Then it stopped. Wouldn’t budge. Nope, it said, I ain’t going there. The needle was jammed. The wheel wouldn’t turn, the backpack wouldn’t budge.

“Oh no, I’ve wrecked it!” That’s the kind of thought I have after talking to authoritative strangers. I wondered how much it would cost to take a cab with sewing machine and backpack hanging from it to the sewing repair guy.

So I decided to see what I could do first. After dismantling several parts and looking at the underneath of the machine, I found I could cut the threads and set the backpack free. The needle had shifted slightly under the weight of the backpack and had struck the throatplate. I just nudged it and it was fine.

Parts were put back into place. Everything was fine. Except I found an extra thing, a small spring near the sewing machine. It looked like one you’d find inside a pen. So I posted to my favourite vintage sewing machine list and help came rapidly with the url of the Sears parts site, which still has diagrams and all the parts listed for my 40 year old Kenmore.

I studied the diagrams, printed them all out, circled the springs. Then I went over my machine, located the springs or determined that there was no way for the spring to pop out. It was pretty mysterious. I went over and over it. Until I realized something that made me shake my head. You know how I wrote the spring looked like it came from a pen? Well, it probably fell out of the backpack when I was maneuvering. When I was emptying it out, I found a busted pen in the backpack, but not the spring. So there it is. Oh man!

I should probably just sit still and stare at the ceiling until I calm down.

*Electric Home 1919

See the electric car, central vac, electric toaster and cigar lighter and more in this 1919 silent film ad for GE. (However the electric home still has a servant.) And now we can’t get enough of the AC stuff. One of these days, I’m getting me a treadle sewing machine…

*Monday Jan 25/10



day 184: pressure, originally uploaded by near proximity.

*Draft 9 and Sewing

Two weeks ago, I started draft 9. The cuts are done, the joints smoothed out. Now I have several new chapters to write and some delicate fine tuning. Slow work.

This is why I’m blogging less often and late to comment (if at all) on other people’s blogs. When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about it. Yesterday I jumped up in the middle of supper to run upstairs and write notes before I forgot what I was thinking. This morning I got off the ice and clumped over to the snackbar. There I borrowed a pen and wrote notes on a napkin, stuck it in my pocket and went back to skating.

But this afternoon, I was totally absorbed in sewing. Well, totally, except for helping one child with math homework and the other child with math and social studies. (I sent them upstairs to solicit help from A so I could sew obliviously for a while.)

I meant to make a scarf out of old clothes but the fabric had other plans. Instead it turned into a drawstring bag, which my younger daughter is now using to hold a magic wand and a pillow for one of her stuffies. I have to say that she designed the pillow herself, using her own magic brain and hand sewing while I made the bag.

Here is daughter (back view for safety) and the bag in our hallway:

And here’s a closer view of the bag and the pillow (she even made a pillow case for it).

In the change room after skating, I had a chat with a couple of women about my comfortable recreational skates. It turned out that one of the women, whose skating I’ve admired for several years (but whom I hadn’t recognized), interviewed me about eleven years ago when The River Midnight was published.

That was before children, before skating, before sewing and knitting, before we owned this house.

While sewing the pillow, my younger daughter had a conversation with me about her birth parents. I said that I’m sure they would be happy to know how much she is loved. Except that I had trouble finishing the sentence. I don’t cry over tragedy. I am experienced with stoicism. But this brought uncontrollable tears to my eyes: all of this, which came after my first novel was published, which I could not foresee, but was dreaming into being.

You can see it in The River Midnight, if you read the last chapter. The great-granddaughter of the midwife is praying with her husband, holding her children close. She is named as myself.

And I wrote that before I met A. The very summer before I met him. I wrote it a twenty hour drive from here, in the peace of the country, dreaming my life into being.

I had no idea. I wrote to myself over and over that summer: the path is clear. I didn’t know what it meant.

Here we are.

I need to read some examples of police procedural climaxes. I’m not writing a police procedural. I’m writing literary fiction, but for reasons I can’t yet disclose (or give away too much), I need to bone up on my knowledge of thrillers. All I want is the last couple of chapters! Any recommendations?

*Kate McGarrigle

From 1990:

R.I.P Kate. You have been on my musical scene since I can remember. Obit in The New Yorker here.

*Monday Jan 18/10



Night Rider, originally uploaded by G a r r y.

I had a hankering to look at photos from down under as there it’s summer.

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