Well That's Cool: Recent Episodes
Ben Fast
Well That’s Cool is a new, quick-release podcast launched by Ben Fast. Grown in an age of self-isolation, curiosity still drives us to seek out cool things, interesting people, and fun distractions. The podcast is ideational, growing as it grows, so follow along and don’t forget to share what you find cool!
Hello fellow isolators!
Welcome to a special season-ending bonus episode. It is March 17th today, which makes it one year since a state of public health emergency was declared here in Alberta. That’s right, one year of COVID quarantines, a year with an overarching sense of fear (among other feelings), and a year quite different from those we’ve experienced before. I started this podcast about a week after we all started working from home. It’s a weird feeling of almost not being able to remember what that was like, as well as thinking it was only yesterday.
I thought I would start a little project where I talked with cool people about cool things they were doing as a way to practice some podcasting, connect with people outside my apartment, and keep me busy through what was supposed to be a short disruption. Well a year later and I think the show has done just that, so it is a fitting time to wrap things up and take a break for a while. But, before I do, I wanted to have one more conversation with someone who has experienced at least part of this year doing something most of us could hardly imagine doing in a good year, let alone in the middle of a pandemic.
In this special bonus episode, I talk with Edmonton’s own cyclocross star, Sidney McGill. Sidney had just come back from a winter riding bikes in Belgium, and I wanted to know more about racing in a pandemic, how her sport changed with COVID precautions, and how exactly a young Canadian takes part in elite world-level events.
If you want to learn more about Sidney’s riding life, follow her on Instagram @SidneyMcGill. You can also learn more about her teams and sponsorships with Pedalhead Bicycle Works and Liv Cycling.
And that about wraps up Season 1 of the Well That’s Cool podcast. I’ve had a great time taking you with me as we explored stories from the Netherlands, Scotland, and now Belgium, as well as life on the road with Engelbert Humperdink. I also want to thank the five authors who joined me live this fall and winter for the Book Club series, as well as the two who talked with me about writing with autism and making Mennonites funny.
It has been a crazy year, and this podcast has been a distraction, a motivator, and just a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed the adventure too, and I’d love to hear what you thought about it. You can reach out to me by email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com and I’m also on Facebook or on Twitter. I don’t have solid plans for a season 2 yet, but feel free to send me a suggestion and I may pop back into your feeds occasionally this spring as the fancy takes me.
In the meantime, I’m still making my model airplane kits, trying to read more regularly, and now thanks to Sidney I’m thinking of putting the wheels back on the road and stretching the cycling legs as the temperatures are rising. I may not be getting muddy and tearing up the local park like Sidney does, but I love that feeling of freedom and exploring that comes with pushing on the pedals. We’ve all been cooped up inside for a long time, why don’t you join me for a ride sometime, wherever you are, and get some much needed and very soothing fresh air. That’s my plan for getting out of this pandemic winter!
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! And as we count down the days of final week of people experiencing first-time pandemic birthdays, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Well That’s Cool podcast!
One of the things about this podcast’s origin was I didn’t really know what it was going to become. I started the show as a way to talk with cool people doing cool things during the pandemic. As the fall and winter of 2020 came around, things naturally evolved into a Zoom book club, a monthly chance for me to talk with authors, poets, and people working in the literary sphere. Let’s face it, those people are cool, and they’re pretty decent at communicating, since it is their day job. I hosted five club meetings and was very happy to have a small but mighty regular virtual audience join me, making the episode recordings both a fun time with friends and a cool way to keep the podcast going. As we’re heading towards one year living with this pandemic, and one year since I started this podcast, and with the temperature rising and people starting to find ways to live a bit more normally again, I’ve started thinking about wrapping up Season 1 and taking a break from the Well That’s Cool idea. We’ve had some great book club meetings, and they were – I hope – a useful and fulfilling activity for both the attendees and you listeners during the dark winter months.
To wrap up Season 1, I decided to have one more conversation with an author, this time with someone who spends his time satirizing my very family history. If you listened to some of my earlier episodes you’ll know I spent a few weeks in 2019 traveling to Scotland to find out more about my mom’s side of the family tree. Well, part of my dad’s are Mennonites, coming to Canada most recently from the Ukraine, or what was then the Russian Empire, and going further back through Prussia and the Netherlands. I was also raised attending a Mennonite church and I have many Mennonite friends across Canada and the US, so it’s been an important identifier for me growing up, maybe even more ingrained than my interest in and connection with Scottish history that started a few years ago.
For my guest on this episode, Andrew Unger, author of Once Removed and the man behind the website The Daily Bonnet, satirizing Mennonites comes from a deep family and personal connection to the Mennonite experience as well. His writing features more Mennonite references than I can catch, his subjects cover all aspects of Mennonite life through the ages and into today. Using that Mennonite history and culture that shaped his perspective of the world as a lens to look back on Mennonites and look at the outside world provides him with ample material to draw on, and a great opportunity to share a chuckle with Mennonites – and everyone else – along the way.
In our conversation, we explore Mennonite history and culture, how to write (and teach) satire, just why his character Timothy Heppner is fighting to preserve heritage, and how articles about Mennonite sex positions are not as controversial as you may think!
My thanks to Andrew Unger for talking with me about all things Mennonite, as well as his writing and approach to satire. I really enjoyed both my conversation and his novel Once Removed as a way to connect with and laugh alongside a part of my family story and my own identity. As Andrew mentioned, you can find his work at AndrewUnger.com or at dailybonnet.com.
Now I said off the top that this interview was going to wrap up Season 1, but I actually have one more special episode left, which will drop on the one year anniversary of the first lockdown restrictions coming into effect here in Alberta. The first case was reported on March 5th, but on March 17, when total cases had already reached 97, the province declared a state of public health emergency. You know the rest of the story, it’s been a year to remember since then, or a year to forget I guess. At times it feels like the longest year, and at times I am amazed that a full year has already passed. To…commemorate? Acknowledge? I dunno, on the one-year anniversary of these restrictions, I’ll release the season-ending bonus episode. I’m going to talk with someone from right here in Edmonton who spent a good chunk of this winter in Europe, doing some pretty amazing things with large groups of other people. It’s getting back to the podcast’s roots: talking with cool people doing cool things, and I think the difference from our lives this year will be an interesting one. So watch for that episode coming next week and find out who did what!
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! And as we count down the days of final week of people experiencing first-time pandemic birthdays, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
Hello fellow isolators, and welcome to the fifth edition of the Well That’s Cool Book Club!
For our February meeting, we had the first poet to make a special guest appearance at the Well That’s Cool Book Club. Jenna Butler is more than just a poet, however, she is also an essayist, professor, and organic farmer. Jenna’s writing includes the poetry collections Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; a collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail; and the travelogue Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Revery: A Year of Bees, is her latest work, and features essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery. It is now out from Wolsak and Wynn.
In this episode, Jenna and I talked about poetry, prose, emotion, writing as social justice, farming, climate change, and publishing. It was quite the discussion, one that helped me understand poetry and its role in conveying different messages, from hope for the future in a challenging world to the experience of watching the summer solstice. Our conversation really brought forward the passion Jenna has for her work and the world around her, something I think you’ll hear throughout the episode.
Jenna’s recommendations to the live audience included Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree.
Thanks again to Jenna Butler for bringing such passion and interesting experiences to the Book Club this month. I loved hearing about those direct, personal experiences dealing with and taking action against climate change, as well as nerding out on poetic Svalbard adventures. I know a number of the club’s members this month went right out and bought copies of Jenna’s work, and if you want to learn more you can find them at jennabutler.com.
For me, I’m halfway through Once Removed by Andrew Unger (more on that below) and have started Spitfire by John Nichol. This is a history book about “Britain’s greatest warplane” that jumps through the story of the Spit with little vignettes and excerpts about the people who worked on and flew the great airplane. I’m not sure I can define the style of popular history, it really does seem like Nichol put all the little bits he could find in archives together independently rather than using them to put a narrative together like you might expect. It’s not a bad effect, and nice to be able to read in short chunks. What are you reading these days? You can send me a recommendation on Facebook or on Twitter, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
As for this podcast, it is amazing to think I put out the first episode 11 months ago, back at the end of March 2020. This show was going to be my little experiment in podcasting for fun, finding cool people doing cool things and sharing their stories with cool people like you. When I started I really didn’t know where this COVID thing would go, how bad it would affect me personally or the people around me, and how our lives would be shaped by it in the weeks, months, or, worst case, years to come. We’re almost a full year in now and here in Alberta things have been…well not amazing but not the worst in the world. I’m very lucky personally not to have experienced medical issues, but am definitely feeling the impacts of the isolation and lack of socializing that came with everything. The way this podcast evolved into a book club this fall helped connect with friends and keep that curiosity flowing through the dark winter weeks.
But what next? Well, future plans and interest in hobbies have fluctuated just about as much the temperature this week or our moods this year. With a year fast approaching since the first Well That’s Cool episode was published, I’m going to wrap up season one next month. I’m really excited to have one last author interview to share with you, I’ll be talking with Andrew Unger about his Mennonite satire at the Daily Bonnet and his new novel Once Removed (I’m loving it so far and can’t wait to ask him all about it!). Watch for that season finale episode in early March. I’ll be taking the break to get back to my half-finished model airplane kit, dusting off my typewriter, catching up on work, obviously, and actually doing some of the reading I keep promising myself. After a breather I’ll also be looking at some new ideas, either for a season two or a new show experiment, so watch this space. We are a year in and can all use a break, but I will miss putting together these book club meetings and episodes for you. If you want to take up the torch and host your own club, don’t forget to send me an invite!
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
Hello fellow isolators, and welcome to the fourth edition of the Well That’s Cool Book Club, and our first meeting of 2021! Things are getting cold here in Edmonton so what better time to curl up with a good book and get reading? Or in this case, to get on Zoom with some friends new and old to talk about books!
In this episode, I talk with author and communications scholar, C.J. Lavigne. C.J.’s debut novel, In Veritas, was published in May 2020 and is already getting rave reviews. This novel explores the nature of truth and the complexities of human communication, all within a rich and imaginative fantasy version of Ottawa and with a character who experiences synesthesia.
Our conversation explored writing speculative fiction (which, as I found out, is an umbrella term for lots of work you might call fantasy or “genre”), how In Veritas was constructed over eight years, and how Verity’s world of synesthesia and a magic-adjacent Ottawa shapes C.J.’s exploration of human communication.
There was a LOT of book talk in this episode as well, including some great questions from our virtual audience. Just some of the titles C.J. mentioned include Premee Mohamad's Beneath the Rising, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic, and Sarah Gailey's The Echo Wife, along with C.L. Clark's The Unbroken and Tamsyn Muir's Alecto the Ninth.
As for my monthly reading update, along with finishing the last few chapters of In Veritas, I’m halfway through The Museum of Forgotten Memories by Anstey Harris, a book my mom gave me for Christmas, but with the temperatures dropping here in Edmonton I might need to pull out another Antarctic exploration book to brush up my cold-weather survival skills. I’ve got a biography of Roald Amundsen looking pretty good for that!
Do you have any new year reading recommendations for me, or any good books you got for Christmas? You can get in touch with the podcast on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
I am excited to announce that the Book Club is getting extended into February! Join me on February 18 at 8 pm Mountain Time for a conversation with poet, environmentalist, professor, farmer, traveller, and writer Jenna Butler. We’ll be talking about everything from bee keeping to boating in Svalbard – it could be one of the biggest episodes yet! Register here.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
Hello isolators! It’s me, Ben Fast, with another bonus mini episode!
I’ve been talking with authors a lot on the podcast recently. In the first episode of the Book Club series I’m running this winter, one of the live studio audience members was herself a writer. Keara Farnan is the author of I Only See in Black & White, a memoir about living with autism and the way that shapes her experiences in everyday life.
I know a little bit about autism from my work in museum education, I was fortunate enough to run a sensory-friendly event at the Copperbelt Railway and Mining Museum in Whitehorse back in 2016. At that event I learned a lot about how autism and other sensory spectrum disorders challenge how people of all ages interact with the world around them. I know some great educators here in Alberta or back in my home province of BC who are making those museum spaces and programs welcoming to people who may not experience their environment the same way you or I do.
But with that said, I’ve rarely actually talked with someone who lives with autism, or who can communicate that life and their own experiences in a way that makes sense to me, let alone who has written a book about it. Keara was happy to talk with me about her life and writing the book, and I’m excited to play it for you here.
My thanks to Keara Farnan for talking with me about her book, I Only See in Black & White. Here in Canada it is estimated that 1 in 66 children are on the autistic spectrum, with 50,000 autistic teens yearly losing support as they move out of school and into adulthood. There is much that is misunderstood about living with autism and it was great to hear Keara’s book is having an impact by sharing her story. If you want to get a copy for yourself, or for someone you know, visit Keara’s website at kearafarnan.com, or search for I Only See in Black & White on Amazon.
There are lots of cool things coming with the podcast, including the next Book Club meeting with special guest CJ Lavigne on January 21. Visit benfast.ca/cool for more info. Until next time, thanks for listening to this bonus episode, a Happy New Year to you all, and stay well out there!
Hello fellow isolators! I hope you are all doing well on this strange Christmas Eve. I know many people are not seeing family or having to change plans to keep everyone safe, as well as dealing with new restrictions in some provinces. As these played out in mid-December, it seemed another perfect time to have a second socially-distant book club meeting! As usual, I was joined by a special guest and a live studio audience on Zoom for an evening talking about reading, stories, and all things books.
A quick note: Normally I host these book club meetings from my home in Edmonton, but this episode is a bit special. I have travelled home to BC and I recorded this interview during some time in self-isolation in a very cute little tiny home in Campbell River. This is not just a vacation: I made the trip to help my mom move (and will be working remotely from here for a month), so I did my utmost to travel safely and stay healthy. I would like to acknowledge that I hosted this live podcast interview as a visitor on the traditional territories of the Laich-Kwil-Tach, Klahoose, and K’omoks First Nations.
Thank you to the live virtual studio audience who have signed on a bit earlier than normal for this event, it was good to see you and good to connect as our provinces go into stricter phases of restrictions across Canada to help stop the rapid rise of COVID-19.
I was very excited to talk with my third guest on the Well That’s Cool Book Club, Mark Zuehlke. I have had the chance to meet Mark a few times over the past 7 or so years, including at book releases, talks, and when he was a guest speaker for a course I was taking at UVic. Mark is an award-winning author generally considered to be Canada’s foremost popular military historian. His 14-book Canadian Battle Series is the most exhaustive recounting of the battles and campaigns fought by any nation during World War II to have been written by a single author. In recognition of his contribution to popularizing Canadian history, Mark was awarded the 2014 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: The Pierre Berton Award. He is also an award-winning mystery writer, a battlefield tour historian, and a former journalist!
My conversation with Mark explored three areas of his work: the life and work of a popular military history writer, the process of writing Canadian battlefield histories, and some of the stories he’s discovered over the years. Mark recommended a couple good memoirs of Canadian soldiers who became well-known writers after the war, including Farley Mowat’s And No Birds Sang as well as George Blackburn’s The Guns of Normandy and The Guns of Victory.
My thanks again to Mark Zuehlke for talking with the small but regular group of Book Club members this month. If you want to learn more about Mark and his Canadian Battle Series or other writing, visit Zuehlke.ca.
That’s it for the Well That’s Cool Book Club for this year! That’s right, we’ve made it to the end of 2020! I’ll be back for another book club meeting on January 21 at 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time for a conversation with speculative fiction writer and author of In Veritas, C.J. Lavigne. You can register for that meeting here.
As for the latest update on my reading list, I’ve temporarily dropped A History of Scotland by Neil Oliver and just finished History of the Glider Pilot Regiment by Claude Smith. This was a really hardcore history with lots of regimental information and not too much action, though those parts were best when they came around. What a crazy bit of military history! Now I am back to a light sci-fi read with The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi. It is the second book in The Interdependency series and I listened to the first one as an audiobook read by Wil Wheaton. The audio book was good enough, but I think I’m enjoying reading it without an excited Wesley Crusher doing all the voices!
Do you have any new year reading recommendations for me, or any good books you got for Christmas? You can get in touch with the podcast on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
Hello fellow isolators! I hope you are all doing well this fall. It is sad and a bit scary to see how the numbers of new infections for this virus we’re all trying to avoid are climbing around the world again, especially here in Alberta where I live and in my home province of BC. So, what better time to have a second socially-distant book club meeting?
As usual, I was joined by a special guest and a live studio audience on Zoom for an evening talking about reading, stories, and all things books: Alyssa Polinsky, my friend and former boss. Alyssa and I worked together for a year when she came in and covered a parental leave when I worked with the BC Museums Association. We had a great time working together, starting new programs for the sector and eating far too much chocolate, she really was a bad influence on me.
Alongside being a great supervisor, Alyssa is also a great communicator, which is actually what she does for a living. Alyssa is a freelance communications consultant who is currently Acting Director of Communications for the Greater Victoria Public Library. She is also on the Board of the Story Studio Writing Society, a charity that inspires, educates and empowers youth through storytelling and that received the Council of the Federation Literacy Award for BC in 2020. Alyssa is also the President of the Victoria Book Prizes, the organization that annually awards the best adult and children’s books created by a Victoria-based writer.
My conversation with Alyssa explored how storytelling helps youth find their voice, which builds confidence and presence in their community. We also talked about how to pick a good book, which is key to the multi-genre Victoria Book Prizes, but how it means something different to each reader.
The books Alyssa recommended are:
Dear Evelyn by Kathy Page
A Complicated Kindness and All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Sweetland by Michael Crummey
Can We All Be Feminists? edited by June Eric-Udorie
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Thanks again to Alyssa Polinsky for joining me for the second meeting of the Well That’s Cool Book Club. It was great to re-connect on a personal level, I miss our chats, and even more fun to hear all about her reading and views on the importance of storytelling.
If you want to learn more about the organizations we discussed, visit StoryStudio.ca and VictoriaBookPrizes.ca, or visit Alyssa on Instagram at @redheadreader.
I hope you’ll join me again on December 10 for the next club meeting. I’ll be talking with Mark Zuehlke, an award-winning author generally considered to be Canada’s foremost popular military historian. Mark’s Canadian Battle Series, which you’ve likely seen in your local book store, is the most exhaustive recounting of the battles and campaigns fought by any nation during World War 2 to have been written by a single author! I’ll be asking Mark what it’s like to write about such detailed and yet expansive history, how research shapes non-fiction writing, and about what makes him also an award-winning mystery writer. You can register for the conversation here. Also note the slightly earlier time, Mark will be joining me at 6:30 p.m. Mountain Time on December 10.
As for books I’m reading, I’m still working my way through A History of Scotland by Neil Oliver, and I think I might pick up a science fiction read for my next book like Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja. The Oliver book is slow going - I can’t help reading it in the voice of the great TV presenter himself, but get a bit hung up on the Scottish phrasing and the confusing web of Scottish royal characters - but I am enjoying it and have finally reached the Mary Queen of Scots episode. That era is one of my favourites, which you can see here.
Do you have any book recommendations for me? You can get in touch with the podcast on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Speaking of which, the show is now available on Spotify and Google Podcasts!
Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
Vancouver-based young adult fantasy author Rachael Bell-Irving joined the first meeting of the Well That’s Cool Book Club on October 22 for a discussion about writing her first book, discovering the ins and outs of the publishing industry, and developing the characters of a six-book series arc.
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Hey isolaters! This podcast is the product of our ongoing pandemic, an idea developed during the dark days of late winter in snowy, cold Edmonton. Well, it snowed once again here this week and so winter is back in full force. With a 15 degree drop in temperature I must admit I have very little interest in going outside these days, and instead I’ve wanted to curl up with a book and get some distraction time in. What better setting than that for the first meeting of the Well That’s Cool Book Club?
As a reader, I tend to alternate between non-fiction history books and throwaway science fiction for fun. It’s the outcome of studying history for five years and working in museums for another five since, as well as a smash up of my interest in exploration and space. While reading fiction especially, I often wonder how an author can create such long and intricate storylines, develop characters that are so otherworldly, and keep it all together across a series. As a podcaster, I have the perfect platform to find out!
And thus, the book club was born, an idea to bring friends together and share what we’re reading in isolation combined with a time to talk with an author or someone from the wider literary community to learn more about this sector that inspires such curiosity and creativity. I’m very fortunate to know some published authors and to have friends as interested in books as I am who were keen to join me on Thursday night, October 22, for a live podcast recording to kick off this new series. And it is a series, I’m excited to announce a line up through January with more coming in the new year, more on that at the end of the episode.
My special guest for the first book club meeting was Vancouver-based young adult fantasy author Rachael Bell-Irving. Her debut novel, Demons at the Doorstep, was published in January this year. Rachael joined me by Zoom to share her process writing the book, her journey to self-publishing, and what she has in store for the next five books in the series. A big thanks also to the live virtual studio audience who asked some questions at the end of our chat.
Thanks again to Rachael Bell-Irving for starting the Well That’s Cool Book Club with her fantastical writing and experience. After our conversation, Rachael and our studio audience continued chatting about books, sharing what we’re reading these days and more about our reading styles and interests. I just finished The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, a popular book club read that I found interesting enough to keep me reading but strange enough to keep me wondering why I was reading it. Rachael’s recommendations were A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab for magic, fantasy, and some darkness, as well as Woven in Moonlight by Isabel Ibanez for its vivid setting and strong young adult heroine.
If you want to learn more about Rachael’s writing and keep up with what she’s reading in the coming months, visit her website at www.rbellirving.ca or find her on social media @rbellirving. You can get your copy of Demons at the Doorstep on Amazon.
I hope you’ll me for a future Well That’s Cool Book Club event. I’m excited to announce the lineup of special guests through to January, with more for 2021 being confirmed soon! Join me on November 12 at 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time as I talk about educating and empowering youth through storytelling and how you pick an award-winning book with Alyssa Polinsky, board member of Story Studio Writing Society and President of the Victoria Book Prizes. On December 10th I’ll be talking with Canada’s foremost popular military historian, Mark Zuehlke, who is also an award-winning mystery writer. And in January, I’ll be learning about speculative fiction with C.J. Lavigne, author of In Veritas. Learn more about my guests and find links to register for future meetings at benfast.ca/cool/bookclub.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
You can get in touch with the podcast on Facebook or on Twitter. Say hi to the podcast or suggest something you’re curious about by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
The Well That’s Cool Book Club is happy to feature monthly live-recording conversations with authors, editors, writers, publishers and more.
Join the live “studio” audience to hear the interview and ask your own questions, then stick around for an informal chat about what you’re reading or interested in these days. The club meetings are open to anyone and completely free.
Hello isolators. Before we jump in to this episode, I have a quick announcement about a new podcast segment I’m trying out this month. On Thursday October 22, I’m launching the Well That’s Cool book club, a chance for us to get together over Zoom and talk about books and writing and all that fun stuff. Each club meeting I’ll be joined by an author, publisher, teacher, or someone else from the literary field for a conversation about their work in front of a live digital studio audience, and that’s you. After our conversation, the club will share what they are reading, curious about, or even writing themselves. This will be super informal, no advance reading required, and totally free. I hope you’ll join me and my first guest, young adult fantasy author Rachael Bell-Irving, on Thursday October 22 at 8pm Mountain Time for the first event. Register here and learn about Rachael’s exciting debut novel here. Ok, on with the episode!
As part of my visit to Scotland in September 2019, I visited some of the nation’s top museums, galleries, and cultural attractions, trying to learn about what makes Scotland so special, so important to history around the world, and so full of legendary characters. In the last episode, I visited with David Forsyth at the National Museum of Scotland to learn about the objects on display there that tell Scotland’s story of diaspora and industry. The following day I went the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, a beautiful red sandstone neo-gothic palace designed as a shrine for Scotland’s heroes and heroines.
The building opened in 1889 as the world’s first purpose-built portrait gallery. I wanted to see the people Scotland views as representatives of the nation, the historical figures that shaped the direction and identity of the Scottish people. I also know that portrait galleries can be some of the more progressive, challenging cultural organizations because of who they show, so I was curious to see what modern and contemporary stories were on display.
Because of my inability to read Edinburgh’s bus maps and schedules – I still blame the jetlag – I arrived to my tour late, which meant I only had limited time with my guide, Deputy Director & Chief Curator of Portraiture Imogen Gibbon. With the clock ticking before Imogen was off to a meeting, she whisked me through the galleries, still managing to show me quite a few highlights on our walk, even with the shorter time.
Because I was late, I abandoned my line of rigid, structured questions about portraits and their role telling history and instead just went along for the ride, which probably meant Imogen could show me much more than I expected, even while we walked up stairs! And because of that, I think it’s best you do the same, so here is my visit, complete and mostly un-edited. Oh, and if you want to follow along with the floorplan, see below. I hope you enjoy the tour!
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is still closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you want to see some of the items Imogen Gibbon is showing me, look below or explore what’s on at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, but know it’s a sad replacement to seeing them in-person. The Gallery is set to re-open sometime this fall as part of the National Galleries of Scotland’s staged re-opening plans, so make sure to check on that status if you’re nearby soon.
Face masks and coverings are, of course, part of the gallery visiting experience now, but they are also part of the way we mark the pandemic through visuals on our faces. We may recognize friends by what design they have on their masks, mine is a van Gogh painting for example, or we may have seen images of people with masks that we can immediately place as part the timeline of the last seven months.
The National Galleries of Scotland has had at least two major interactions with masks including a partnership this September with North Edinburgh Arts to commission and distribute face coverings with four works from the national collection to workers at seven local charities and commissioning local couturier and designer Frank Francia to design 500 coverings for the Galleries’ staff, as well as a public appeal in July for stories, portraits and ideas that will be displayed along with portraits from the national collection in a display titled You Are Here | 2020: Stories, Portraits, Visions (see the September 10 and July 27 press releases for more info here). I’m sure plenty of those submissions will feature masks in some way, and hope to see some great submissions in 2021!
So it turns out portraiture is a complex, rich, intersectional artform. In Scotland, portraiture tells the story of a vibrant history, a proud people, and links those figures from centuries ago to today’s society in intricate, varied ways. What you think may just be a head and shoulders painting can actually be photography, sculpture, mosaics, and even pieces of the building itself.
The representational and referential portraiture really stood out to me, especially in the temporary exhibition I saw after my walk with Imogen. The Long Look: The Making of a Portrait exhibition was an exploration of portraiture between two artists where painter Audrey Grant asked photographer Norman McBeath to sit for a portrait done in charcoal, a process that would take weeks if not months. Grant then asked McBeath to photograph the drawing at the end of each sitting before erasing the drawing at the start of the next sitting to start the portrait anew. McBeath was interested in the way Grant was working, so started photographing other parts of the process, including her hands, chair and the charcoal itself.
The portrait process, which also featured another portrait of McBeath and two of award-winning crime writer Val McDermid, took two years to complete, and the exhibit displayed the charcoal drawings alongside selections of the photographs and, next to the images, small plastic bags full of the charcoal pieces used each day. The charcoal is, in truth, a portrait as well, but also a tangible marking of the creation of the artwork itself. Looking at this display with its multitude of elements of portraiture really made me think back to the painting of Mary Queen of Scots, and how interesting it would be to have a portrait of the artist at the moment the work was created. What did the brushes look like? How much paint had splashed onto their clothes? What would a portrait of you look like, or of the person making that portrait of you?
I really enjoyed my visit to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, a place I probably would not have added to my list were it not for this podcast. It changed my understanding of portraits, of the importance and the interesting quality. I hope to visit again someday soon, and I hope you will too on your next trip to Scotland. Visit nationalgalleries.org to find all the information about visiting and reopening times for all the National Galleries Scotland locations. My thanks to Imogen Gibbon, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of Portraiture for rushing me through the gallery at the start of her busy day. As you can tell, Imogen’s knowledge and passion for the collection makes for some amazing stories. Thanks also to Charlotte Fortt for helping arrange the visit and guiding me through the streets of Edinburgh while I was lost.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to register for the first meeting of the Well That’s Cool Book Club, featuring a special conversation with author Rachael Bell-Irving. The event starts at 8pm Mountain Time on Thursday, October 22. You can also find a Facebook event, and I’ll be sharing things on Twitter as well. Send me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com if you want to say hi or suggest something you’re curious about, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts!
Until next time, thanks for listening and a happy Thanksgiving to all the Canadian listeners out there. Stay well!
Hey isolators! I’ve got some cool news for you: I’m starting a book club! I know, even with a pandemic none of us have really worked through our to-be-read piles, but this isn’t your standard book club. Instead of all of us reading the same book and talking about it, I’m going to host some friends for a little chat about what we’re reading (or not reading) and what we love about books. It’s going to be super casual, once a month through the winter, and as a bonus I’m going to bring in people who know books cover to cover for a conversation to start off each club meeting.
The first meeting of the Well That’s Cool Book Club is going to be on Thursday, October 22, at 8pm Mountain time. My first special guest is going to be Rachael Bell-Irving, a young adult fantasy author based in Vancouver, who released her first book, Demons at the Doorstep in January of this year. The first title in the Wicked Conjuring series is the story of Jessica, a balance keeper of magic, and her journey to uncover the potential threat of powerful magic being unleashed in her city. The book is full of demons, witty banter, magic spells, and deadly sunsets. I’m looking forward to talking with Rachael about creating her world of witch hunters and urban fantasy, as well as the journey from idea to print. You can find out more about the book, and grab a copy for the young adults or older ones in your life, at rbellirving.ca.
After my talk with Rachael, the book club meeting itself starts. Be ready to share what you’re reading, or what you love about books of any type. I welcome all of you to join me on Thursday, October 22, at 8pm Mountain time. To join the club meeting, head to my website benfast.ca/cool or find the link in the shownotes. There’s also an event on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod, and I’ll share the link on twitter at well_thatscool. Crack a book, let your imagination go wild, and I’ll talk with you and Rachael on October 22!
Hi there isolaters. As I put together the last episode, I realized I had some extra content that didn’t quite fit the full episode. While I talked with David Forsyth, Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary History at the National Museum of Scotland about mainly the Ross Tartan and its role in representing Scottish identity, we also talked a lot about the museum itself and how it presents those stories. Because I am a museum nut and I know many listeners and friends are as well, I’m sharing some of that conversation here.
This conversation was recorded in September 2019 at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
A big thanks to David Forsyth, Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary History at the National Museum of Scotland for taking me on a tour of the museum’s Scottish history galleries. Thanks also to Elaine Macintyre and my friend Rob Cawston for helping arrange my visit. Why not visit nms.ac.uk to explore and learn about the museum’s online collections through their Museum at Home pages.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
If you want to join my Curious Quarantine Club, visit the website at benfast.ca/cool or send a short audio message about what you’re curious about or doing in isolation to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. While you’re there, suggest something for me to look into for the podcast! You can find the show on Twitter at “well_thatscool” or Facebook at wellthatscoolpod, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts!
Until next time, thanks for listening and have fun being curious, staying safe, and washing your hands!
Hey fellow isolaters, welcome to Well That’s Cool, a podcast about things and people I find interesting, I’m curious about, or that are just plain cool.
I’m back, surprise! Let’s face it, I haven’t quite met my idea of a weekly podcast, but also as this quarantine, or whatever it is now, has gone on we’ve all seen there are a lot more things happening in the world than just one pandemic. Real life hasn’t exactly stopped, and if anything real life has gotten more real. Maybe this podcast is more of… an occasional distraction? A hobby I work on when other hobbies don’t hold my interest? When it’s been rainy for a week and I haven’t been out riding my bike as much? Maybe not quite as planned, but I’m back with another episode now, and I’ve got something a bit different for you this time.
Instead of focusing on what we’re doing now, I’m taking you back to a trip I took in September and October last year. My mom and I, along with my aunt and uncle, travelled to Scotland for the trip of a lifetime. We spent three weeks driving and flying around the country, visiting towns big and small, and of course trying all the local drams, cakes, and teas. We had a few reasons to go on the trip. For one, it was something my mom and I promised each other we’d do if we both finished our master’s degrees, which we did a couple years ago. My mom and aunt are also bigtime knitters, and they wanted to go experience the Shetland Wool Week festival way up on the northernmost Scottish islands. And we also used the trip as a chance to explore some family history, visiting our ancestral homeland to see where our family came from prior to their arrival in Canada in the early 1900s.
I decided to take time during the trip to do some recordings for another long-planned podcast project I was going to start. As regular listeners know, that never quite happened, and it took the pandemic six months later to finally get me working. But I did make some recordings, visiting museums and talking with people around the country about Scottish identity and history that I was hoping to turn into some context for a larger project about my own family history and our journey across Scotland. As a museum worker myself, I naturally turned to the Scottish museums to learn more and I had the chance to talk with curators at some of nation’s top museums. I’ve got a few interviews recorded, so this dip into the recent archives will span a couple episodes at least. Keep in mind these were recorded in September and were supposed to be for a larger project, but I hope you enjoy them as they are.
It all started after a 36-hour day of flying from Edmonton to Glasgow, waiting for luggage that went to Amsterdam, a train trip to Edinburgh, a visit with a friend, hiking Arthur’s Seat, touring the Scottish parliament and a night catching up with my family… that was a long day.
I went early the next morning to the National Museum of Scotland to start my trip learning about the history of the Scottish people. While I was there an hour before the public opening, you will hear some noise in the background as the staff were busy cleaning and getting things opened. I was met in the galleries by the perfect person to help me find some of the museum’s iconic pieces: David Forsyth, Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary History.
National Museums Scotland has very generously let me share an image of the Ross Tartan for this episode’s show notes, which you can find on my website at benfast.ca/cool. Tartan designs would become a bit of a theme later in my family’s trip as we ventured through the Western Isles, even though our ancestors probably wouldn’t have worn the patterns coming from the lowlands as they did. Either way, the cultural icon was clearly visible in all the tourist shops as the stereotype of Scottish identity, but getting out to the small villages in the windswept Hebrides really helped see how the history of production reflects the landscape, agriculture, and history of Scotland. My mom and aunt both bought some reams of the cloth, I think that’s what you call it, and I was very happy to receive a little bag made of official Harris Tweed for Christmas. Visit my website at benfast.ca/cool to see some pictures of the bag and our visit to Lewis and Harris. We’ll be back with David Forsyth to hear about a much less flashy item that speaks to Scotland, a Changing Nation, in a minute, but first…
I don’t have a new member of the Curious Quarantine Club to introduce in this episode! Normally I’d take this moment to play a clip from a friend or listener telling their own short story about life in isolation, or about something they’ve learned or found cool, but I haven’t received one for a bit!
Instead, I’ll tell you about an old hobby I’ve gotten back into.
When I was a kid, I think about 5 or 6, my step uncle Steve gave me a diecast model of a Porsche 911. It was super cool, I loved the way the spoiler came up and the doors could open. The tires could even come off the rims, and I spent many an evening taking it apart as far as I could. And while this was a fun toy for a kid, it was probably meant to stay on a shelf, to be appreciated as a little homage to precision engineering and dreams of speed. As I grew older I was still fascinated by the idea of building a small version of something cool like that Porsche, but I’ve never really been a car guy.
Instead, I’m sure influenced by the time I spent flying over southern Ontario with my dad, I got into model airplane kits. My mom and I made a model of the Spirit of St. Louis, the airplane Charles Lindbergh flew in solo across the Atlantic in 1927. The thick silver enamel paint showed so many misapplications of paint and a dozen or so thumbprints from a not-so-dextrous nine-year-old.
The first model I did, or remember doing, mostly on my own was my favourite plane, the P-51D Mustang. I was probably 10 or 11 by then and the quality is a lot better, but I ripped the final decal, a black and white checkerboard pattern that went around the nose, so it was never finished. Maybe I’m a bit of a hoarder, but I still have that plane, now with a broken wheel and lost exhaust duct, because I keep telling myself someday I’ll find a decal sheet and finish it.
I’ve come and gone from the model kits since the ill-fated Mustang, making a handful of models over the years and even getting into paper models, which was super fun and a much cheaper version of the hobby. But throughout that two decade span one thing has remained constant: I keep buying model kits! I went to the big airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with my dad five times as a teenager, each time coming back with one or three gently packed into my suitcase. Their crumpled boxes are still on my shelf. I’d stop by the hobby store and like any book store visit – my other guilty pleasure – I’d leave with a couple old discount boxes, probably missing parts or so old they aren’t worth the plastic they’re made of. I even bought one in Japan and, go figure, haven’t made it yet because the instructions are all in Japanese!!!
About the end of making the third episode of this podcast, I was looking at the stack of boxes jammed up in the corner of my closet, thinking of all the potential fun that could be had, and decided finally to get some done and off the pile. Because it’s been a year since I last made one, and about five years since I’ve made them consistently, I started with a couple old kits to practice. I made an Airfix Spitfire that turned out was a snap-together kit, but it was still challenging and was good practice for painting. Because I made a Spitfire, I had to make it’s nemesis, a Messerschmitt BF-109 E. This was an even older model, molded in a bright blue plastic for some reason. I had to go through three paint conversion charts to match the paint colours they make today, and I accidentally made the cockpit windows opaque, but making these two old kits was fun and good practice for the modern kits.
Just tonight I finished up one of the kits I’ve been saving for 15 years: an SR-71 Blackbird by the model company Revell Monogram. It turned out to be a struggle actually, the instructions weren’t always helpful and the parts are pretty delicate, but it looks cool finished now. I’m going to give it to my friend Peter as a very late thanks for helping me move last year.
With all this practice, I’m going to try my first ship model next, a much newer kit of the Second World War Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku. It is 1/700 scale, meaning the little airplanes that will sit on its deck are 1 centimetre long. And I have to paint them three colours… and put decals on them. If you want to see some pictures of the models I’ve made in quarantine, check out this episode’s notes on my website at benfast.ca/cool. Let me know what you think, is my practice paying off? What airplane kit should I make next?
If you want to join my Curious Quarantine Club, visit the website at benfast.ca/cool or send a short audio message about what you’re curious about or doing in isolation to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. I hope to hear from you on a future episode!
Now back to my conversation with David Forsyth, this time talking to me about industrial history presented in the museum as another important form of modern Scottish identity.
The last time I was in Edinburgh I visited the National Museum of Scotland just as they closed some galleries for the final stages of a major multi-year re-development. This time I got to see it all, from the Lewis Chessmen to Dolly the Sheep, and everything in between. As the bells tolled for 10:00 am and the doors opened to the public, David brought me down to the main floor to frame the museum as a part of Scottish identity itself.
A big thanks to David Forsyth, Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary History at the National Museum of Scotland for taking me on a tour of the museum’s Scottish history galleries. Thanks also to Elaine Macintyre and my friend Rob Cawston for helping arrange my visit. The NMS museums have started re-opening in August, and If you get the chance to travel to Scotland again, I highly recommend visiting the museum. And until then, why not visit nms.ac.uk to explore and learn about the museum’s online collections through their Museum at Home pages. It’s really cool to relive my visit right on my computer or phone.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
If you want to join my Curious Quarantine Club, visit the website at benfast.ca/cool or send a short audio message about what you’re curious about or doing in isolation to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. While you’re there, suggest something for me to look into for the podcast! You can find the show on Twitter at “well_thatscool” or Facebook at wellthatscoolpod, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts!
Until next time, thanks for listening and have fun being curious, staying safe, and washing your hands!
To my regular listeners – and I am happily surprised to know there are a handful of you already – apologies for the month-long absence from your feeds. What can I say? It’s my first global pandemic, after all.
As a quick update, things are going well for me, I’m still happy and healthy here in Edmonton. I’m very fortunate to still have work, to have some nice weather to enjoy riding my bike, and to have plenty of people to connect with on the Interwebs (is anybody else tired of the virtual meeting sound quality though?). I think I’m heading into my ninth week of isolation, and it’s been a bit strange the last week or so because suddenly we’re talking about re-opening things and trying to get the world spinning again. It’s been surprisingly…difficult, almost, to consider returning to old ways of life and I know nothing will happen quickly but I’ve gotten strangely used to this sheltered, insular, distant life. It seems any change, even one we’ve hoped for for a while and that we hope is a good change, brings about some adjustments and can make your head spin. I know that timelines and circumstances may be different where you’re listening, but I hope you can navigate this new disruption easily, that it brings you joy and continued safety, but also that you know it’s ok to go slow, or get help where you need it!
On this episode, I’m going back to a recording I did in the first couple weeks of isolation. I called up my friend Jenny Ing to talk with her about life as a touring musician. Jenny is an old band mate and friend from my high school days. We only had one year together in the same school but we did spend a few years together in Victoria’s famous SummerBand program and got to play music around town a few times at least. SummerBand was a personal favourite, a program led by some of the area’s greatest school music teachers that allowed kids to try new instruments and challenged young musicians to learn charts and perform them in just two weeks. The program wrapped up about a decade ago, and sadly we’ve lost some of those teachers over the years since, but I’d say their legacy lives on in alumni like Jenny.
I wanted to give Jenny a call to see what life is like working with one of the legends of the music industry, Engelbert Humperdinck.
As I said to Jenny, I’ve never really listened to Engelbert before, so I decided to look into the singer’s background. If you’re questioning just how popular or important he has been on the pop music industry, consider this: his 1967 version of “Release Me” was a top ten hit on both sides of the Atlantic and reached #1 in the Britain, keeping a peculiar double A-side single from reaching the top of the charts in the UK. You may have heard of the single combo, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” by a little known band called The Beatles. Read the Wikipedia page, it is 60 years of amazing.
In 50 years my musical claim to fame will be having played a friend’s wedding with Jenny and my friend Stu. Stu and I had matching purple ties, and spent our time fumbling around some jazz standards while Jenny did her best to make us sound good. Look for a picture of the three of us playing on my website, benfast.ca/cool.
In this episode you’ll also hear the third installment of the Curious Quarantine Club! My friend Michelle (also a friend from high school) shares news that she’s welcomed her second baby right at the beginning of isolation. What an interesting time for that little baby to be born. I’m wishing all the best to Michelle, and to those other friends who have had babies in the last 8 weeks or who are giving birth soon. I don’t know if having babies really counts as a new hobby during the time of Coronavirus, or if anyone is still picking up new hobbies or not. Either way, I want to hear what you’re doing to get through isolation. What curious things are keeping you interested in learning, being active, or experimenting? If you want to join the Curious Quarantine Club, send a short audio message about something cool to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
My thanks to Jenny Ing for sharing some time with me and telling me about her musical adventures. If you want to see Jenny’s recording of The Carpenters’ “Rainy Days & The Mondays” using the Acapella app, visit my website at benfast.ca/cool. If you’re an Engelbert fan, I hope you get to see him taking the stage around the world someday soon!
Thanks also to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
If you want to join my Curious Quarantine Club, send a short audio message about what you’re doing or what you’re curious about in isolation to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. While you’re there, suggest something for me to look into for the podcast! You can find the show on Twitter or Facebook. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts!
And one final thing before I go, I want to give a special hello to Martha Harssema who reached out after hearing my last episode where I interviewed my grandma about life in the Netherlands during the Second World War. Martha sent me an email saying she was born in the house my grandma talked about and the one I visited in 2011. Her father was my grandma’s cousin, which makes Martha my first cousin once removed! Thanks for listening and getting in touch, Martha! Who says you can’t meet new people in quarantine!
Until next time, thanks for listening and have fun being curious, staying safe, and washing your hands!
Hello isolators, and welcome to another episode of Well That’s Cool, a podcast about things and people I’m curious about! I hope you are doing well finding some joy in your time of quarantines and distancing. I’m almost done my fourth week of working and more or less staying at home, it’s hard to believe it’s that long already. It’s just about Easter as well, tomorrow is Good Friday, and I know that for many people this was supposed to be a weekend of spending time with family and observing important religious events in a variety of faith calendars. I was looking forward to a vacation back home on the west coast, but I’m still in Edmonton. At least things are, or were for a couple days, getting a bit warmer, finally.
I know that this level of disruption can be difficult, especially now that we’re a month into isolation, and our first holiday weekend is here. I of course feel sad for the change too, but I know we are doing this for a very important reason and that in the greater scheme of things it hasn’t been that long. You’ve probably seen the memes and commentaries that this is our generation’s moment of sacrifice, our experience of quasi-wartime and widespread pulling together for the greater good. It feels a bit harder to complain when you put it that way…
I have been thinking of disruption and the impact it has on our lives recently, and that also made me think of wartime, especially the Second World War when many parts of the world were under occupation for four or five years. So, to get a better picture of what life during the war was like, I called up somebody who could tell me a bit more. So, to get a better picture of what life during the war was like, and if there’s any comparison to today, I called up somebody who could tell me – from personal experience – a bit more about life during the Occupation… my grandmother!
I called my grandma, not just because she lived through the war, but because she wrote about those experiences in a memoir, published in 2018. The memoir is from a child’s perspective and has interesting insight into how children experience significant change and trauma. I wanted to get a sense of if there really was a commonality between COVID-19 and the Occupation, and if there is anything we could learn from that war 80 years ago. But, to get some context, and for your benefit, dear listener, I asked my grandma to start at the beginning.
It’s fascinating hearing the stories of life changing through the eyes of a child, what my grandma remembers about losing things like light and beautiful colours and what acts brightened their days. Kids today are out of school too, but thankfully not facing years without education let alone yelling soldiers in the hallways and playgrounds. Being under occupation in the countryside made life quite isolated for a six-year-old just starting school, so I asked if there was much interaction or awareness of other peoples’ experiences at that time.
Let’s try to be helpful to others in need as we face our isolation. Comparatively, there’s so many more opportunities for connection, service, and care even from a distance. I had the opportunity to visit my grandma’s childhood home when I visited Europe in 2011. If you want to see what the house looked like 10 years ago, and some other pictures from around that area, visit this episode’s notes on my website at benfast.ca/cool.
As always on this podcast, I want to hear about what you’re doing to get through the Coronavirus isolation. What curious things are keeping you interested in learning, being active, or experimenting? I’m calling it my Curious Quarantine Club, and it’s time to welcome the second member now, my friend Keltie from right here in the Edmonton region! She's using her time to learn to weave. Thanks for sending that in Keltie and best of luck with the weaving! If you want to join the Curious Quarantine Club, send a short audio message about something cool to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
My grandma has written a book about her childhood experiences in the Netherlands during the war. The book is called “Finding Shelter: A child’s memoir of World War Two” and you can get your own print or electronic copy from angelinafast.com or at Chapters, Amazon, or Word Alive Press. It is a fascinating memoir full of vivid memories, childhood observations, and inspiring stories of love, hope, and perseverance. My grandma shared some of those incredible stories with me of life during the Occupation, the impact of trauma on her as a child as life returned to normal, and how her experiences could relate to our period of isolation today.
One thing we are increasingly aware of is the lasting impact of trauma on the mental health of children or people of all ages. Already in our month-long isolation our public health officials are encouraging people to get outside, check in with more isolated people, write journals, and seek help if necessary. Here is a link to the Alberta mental health resources for dealing with COVID-19, and for talking with children about COVID-19. In this episode, my grandma also talks about how the Occupation affected her later in life, and mentions my step-grandfather, Joe Vlaar, and his experiences with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-type challenges late in his life.
It’s amazing to think of what my grandma, her family, and the people of her town felt in May 1945 as the war, for them, came to an end. Here’s to when we too can safely step outside and be together in person again, though I just can’t imagine it will be quite as big as that party in Groningen in May 1945. Stick around right to the end of this episode for one more incredible story from my grandma, one that I had never heard growing up, and one that had me re-reading the chapter two or three times to make sure I read it right.
A big thanks to my grandma, Angelina Fast-Vlaar, for telling me these stories for the podcast. I am so thankful to hear she is doing well, staying healthy and self-isolated, connecting with family in new ways, and full of hope. This episode is also going out on my Grandma’s birthday, April 9th, so please join me wherever you are listening to this show, in wishing her a very big happy birthday. If you want a copy of “Finding Shelther: A Child’s memoir of World War Two,” or any of her other award-winning books, I’ve put a link to her website in the show notes or on my website at benfast.ca/cool.
Thanks also to Ron Yamauchi for the theme music, and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the logo. Check out Anna’s work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and everything else for this podcast is done by me, Ben Fast.
If you want to join my Curious Quarantine Club, visit the website at benfast.ca/cool or send a short audio message about what you’re curious about or doing in isolation to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. While you’re there, suggest something for me to look into for the podcast! You can find the show on Twitter at @well_thatscool or Facebook at /wellthatscoolpod, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! I’ve had a recommendation for getting this on Spotify, so maybe that will come later.
Until next time, thanks for listening, keep being curious, wash your hands, and have a good one!
Hey fellow isolators, welcome to Well That’s Cool, a podcast about things and people I find interesting, I’m curious about, or that are just plain cool.
I’m glad you’re here and I hope you’re doing well. I’m recording this in Edmonton, Alberta where I’m doing my best to stay self-isolated, washing my hands a lot and getting used to talking to everyone through my computer. It’s a strange and unsettling world out there right now, and I know a lot of you are worried, anxious, and doing your best to help stop the spread as well, and I thank you for that.
I decided to use my extra time at home to start this podcast, not just because it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but because I hope it can be a distraction or at least a change from your “new normal.” I’m hoping to talk to cool people doing cool things and explore some interesting topics. I’m not going to avoid COVID-19 in all episodes, because let’s face it, that’s hard to do, but I do want to focus on fun things, explore some things I’m curious about, and keep challenging myself to try new things.
As I started to think about this first episode, I looked through my social media channels to see who was doing cool things to get through or support others during self-isolation and social distancing. I came across former City of Victoria Councillor, Chris Coleman, and an idea he had about sharing books and getting people reading during their time at home. I decided to give him a call and find out a bit more.
In case you’re curious, I’m reading Hard Knox: Musings from the edge of Canada, a hilarious look at my home from Victoria’s favourite columnist and Chris’s book club friend, Jack Knox. Jack was invited as a guest author to The Boys’ Book Club, a group of gentlemen that Chris admits are there more for the talking and drinks than the books, to discuss one of his books. He liked it so much, he became a member! Whenever the Boys Book Club meets, they each throw some money into a pot for local literacy projects, and over the years that’s led to hundreds of dollars donated!
One thing I’m curious about is what you’re doing during isolation. We’ve all seen or hear of procrastinated projects, new hobbies, or just things to try and stay sane that people are doing from home, but what curious things are you doing, learning about, or trying out during the pandemic? I’m calling it my Curious Quarantine Club, and I’d like to welcome the first member, Simone, who has resurrected an old pottery wheel on her balcony to let her keep practicing her art.
Well that’s cool, Simone, and thanks for sending that in! Simone is a friend of mine from back home in Victoria, and it’s good to hear from her. If you want to join the Curious Quarantine Club, send a short audio message to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
A big thanks to Chris Coleman for joining me to talk literacy, reading in isolation, and to share his projects of spreading books around town (and the country). If you want to share books like Chris is doing, just remember to stay safe and follow the instructions of your local medical officials. We recorded this interview near the beginning of self-isolation and the rules may have changed by now or may be different where you’re listening from. As Chris says: “stay home, wash your hands, and read a good book!”
Thanks also to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
If you want to join my Curious Quarantine Club, visit the website at benfast.ca/cool or send a short audio message about what you’re curious about or doing in isolation to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. While you’re there, suggest something for me to look into for the podcast! You can find the show on Twitter at @well_thatscool or Facebook at wellthatscoolpod, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts!
Until next time, thanks for listening and have fun being curious, staying safe, and washing your hands!
Hey, I’m Ben Fast and welcome to my new podcast!
It’s a crazy world out there right now. We’re living in an age of isolation, staying healthy by staying apart while also trying to keep our lives going. It’s a lot of change and bad news, and I find sometimes I just want to be distracted. I’m working from home right now and self-isolating for the good of the people, so I’ve got a bit of extra time on my hands. I thought, what better way to keep myself busy than challenging myself with a new podcast project, right?!
I’m calling this thing “Well That’s Cool” because I want to spend some time talking with people – from a distance, obviously! – about things that make me say, “well, that’s cool!” I’m going to try and get things out as quick as I can, with lots of interviews and embracing the rough edit. You may hear my squeaky chair, my crackly heaters, and maybe even my downstairs neighbours at times, but it’s all part of the adventure.
I want to share with you what I find cool, but I also want to find out what’s cool for you. What are you learning about, reading, watching, creating – what makes you curious? Join my Curious Quarantine Club by sending a short audio message to wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com, or suggest something for me to look into for the podcast. You can find the show on Twitter at @well_thatscool (https://www.twitter.com/well_thatscool) or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wellthatscoolpod. or visit my website at https://www.benfast.ca/cool to listen to more episodes or subscribe.
Who knows where this is going to go? I hope you’ll join me, be curious with me, and I hope you find it cool! No go was your hands and hum along to the theme tune!
Theme music is by Ron Yamauchi. The podcast logo is designed by Anna Schroeder of Annather Design (https://annatherdesign.com/)