This week, I received an email from Moose House Publications. ’Big books about small places’. They were looking for short stories for Volume 2 ( 3000 words). In the same time frame, I received an email from Melissa Rostow. In 2015, I had mentored her on a Story Mapping project: four days through Haida Gwaii (also, see previous blog posts 1, 2, 3 and 4).
Here is my short story submission, entitled,
COGS IN A WHEEL
The starting point would be ’the Story of COGS’ (see also this).
This was written in 2014 with Heather Stewart. It was turned into an electronic book by Ted Mackinnon. In the same time frame, Jonathan Murphy formed GoGeomatics Canada. Story Mapping: Haida Gwaii was posted on their website in July 2015.
The next phase was the creation of a blog site under the heading Ernest Blair Experiment. This started in January 2017 with ’At the Edge of Paradise’ — a poem. This blog still continues today. March 19, 2022, is blog #393.
The challenge for me is …
How to turn writing in an electronic blog format into a short story?
Here is my solution: ‘COGS in a wheel’.
Many years ago, when the acronym COGS referred to the College of Geographic Sciences before it became the Centre of Geographic Sciences, and part of the Nova Scotia Community College, David Raymond, Cartographer, produced a number of items that showed cogs in a wheel; each Geomatics discipline engaging with the other, related disciplines. These included Computer Programming, Cartography, Planning, Surveying, and Remote Sensing.
This educational model still has relevance today. Increasingly, we need the education to be holistic and to focus on the inter-connectedness of disciplines, sciences and technologies.
Today, I picked up George Monbiot’s ’This can’t be happening’ in the Penguin Ideas Series, #4.
From his Foreword (p.5)
”Clearly, we need to demand practical changes: new technologies, new economies, new ways of living. But we also, and primarily, need to do something deeper: to overcome the ignorance the billionaire press has manufactured, to wake our friends from the stupor of consumption, to break through the barrier of disbelief and provoke a new moral imagination.”
From my perspective, we are but all cogs in a wheel. It is the connection between Moose House Publications, Melissa Rostow, Ted Mackinnon, Jonathan Murphy, myself — all connected through COGS in rural Nova Scotia, Lawrencetown, Annapolis County — that gives me hope as we face the global challenges of 2022.
Acknowledgements
Brenda Thompson at Moose House Publications for seeking out short stories. Melissa Rostow for remembering our work on Story Mapping: Haida Gwaii. Edward Wedler added his Remote Sensing and technical expertise. Ted MacKinnon and Jonathan Murphy for their contribution to the “Story of COGS”. Heather Stewart shared the journey.
References
George Monbiot, 2021, This Can’t Be Happening: Great Ideas #4, Penguin Books.
Postscript.
This blog does not meet the 3000 words criteria however it does provide access to other online resources that can expand our imagination and the word count.
On another note: Sunday 20 March 2022 is World Storytelling Day. 2022 theme is “Lost and Found”.
Ernest Blair Experiment 
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