SilverGenes, From Canada, 169 Fans, 34 Hubs, Joined 3 months ago
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Saddlerider1 Interviews SilverGenes
A passionate photographer and writer divulges her sources of inspiration, fascinating projects, and personal background
What authors, on and off Hubpages, have inspired you?
There are so many! I fell in love with C.S. Lewis at an early age when I read Till We Have Faces but didn't read the Narnia stories until I was an adult. J.R.R. Tolkien, Chaim Potok (My Name is Asher Lev), Leon Uris, Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger (A Perfect Day for Bananafish is wonderful!), James A. Michener and the list goes on. Margaret Laurence had a profound effect on how I saw the world though. I recently visited her home, now a museum, in Neepawa, Manitoba and visited the real Stone Angel while I was there. I'm aware that it was bordering on Trekkie-like behavior in a literary sense but oh, it was thrilling! I also love reading Carol Shields and Alice Munro.
As for hubbers, I'm honestly inspired by everyone I read. HubPages is like having a library open 24/7 that is stocked with the ideas, visions, hopes and dreams of ordinary people just like me. That's pretty powerful stuff.
If you have to think of people who have made a huge impact on your life, who will that be and why?
I'd have to say the most important influence on my life was my father. He gave me my first camera when I was two years old and set me loose on the world. I don't think it occurred to him that I was too young to think and reason, so it didn't occur to me either. He taught me to be inquisitive, to explore and to create things. He had a great appreciation for nature and on weekends, we'd go off on hikes and do charcoal botanical sketches together. There was once an entire ecosystem set up in our basement, to my mother's horror I might add. He also had a great love of film which he passed along to me, too. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time with him. He died when I was nine.
What led you to HubPages, was it the community, social interaction, writing or the opportunity to make truckloads of money? The money?
Is there money here (looking around excitedly)? No, it’s not the money. It was actually the reading opportunity, the motherlode of ideas that was there at the click of a button. Then I got brave enough to write something and send it out into the world. It was a little intimidating at first because the talent pool around here is immense but people actually liked what I wrote and that was both surprising and gratifying. There are many now whom I consider friends. As for money, I tend to go with the “do what you love and the money will follow” credo and if it ever happens, it will be a bonus.
When people look back and remember SilverGenes one day, what would you like to be remembered for?
I hope to be remembered as a good person and to have, somewhere along the way, made someone else’s life a little brighter and the world a better place. Anything after that is just gravy.
In your profile you write that Photography is a passion and writing is an obsession. Also you state that your involvement with natural health has been a lifelong affair. I see that you have a few wonderful sites regarding these obsessions. Can you share with us a little more detail of these passions?
Well, HubPages serves my writing obsession nicely. And thank you for the kind words about my other sites. They are all in the early stages of development and will be growing quite a bit over the next few months. Mind you, I spent this last weekend doing a complete overhaul on the SilverGenes Living Well site and nearly threw my computer out the window! Health and natural living is way of life that I decided to share online. I’ve worked in the field and have made it a part of my life pretty much forever. The late Dr. Abram Hoffer is someone I admire very much and was privileged to meet back in the ‘80s after I’d been stricken with a devastating viral illness. Conventional medicine told me there was nothing that could be done and to go home and learn to live with it. The orthomolecular approach that I learned from Dr. Hoffer turned my life around and got me back on my feet, literally. There is no cure-all but sometimes you get what you need.
The photography site is the most work intensive at the moment. While looking through old negatives, I found many taken by my father of people and places unknown. Since I’m working on a family history book, I decided to post them in galleries so others could browse and possibly find relatives. I’ve only scratched the surface so far. There’s a gallery where people can upload photos as well. I think it’s a site that may turn out to be a lot of fun and of course, Photoshop questions are welcome!
I also have a site based on my work with kindergarten readiness. That’s a job I really loved. It involved traveling from urban areas to rural regions and meeting a lot of people who shared their experiences to help one another. It really was an example of communities raising children and I’ll never forget it. And then there’s my personal coloring book blog - When Life Gives You Lemons. It started as personal therapy and just kind of lingered.
Your poetry is phenomenal. What inspires you to write these beautiful pieces?
That’s quite a compliment! Thank you. Poetic thought is an intensely personal place for me and most of the time comes through me rather than from me. It comes from that vast place that is the human experience of things we have yet to understand and for me, serves as an abacus for the questions of the soul. What inspires me? The desire to learn. There has been some discussion in the forum about what constitutes poetry and this is something that I’ve questioned over the years as well. It used to be a craft that was about creating, with well chosen words and structure, an complex artistic literary work that could stand alone as a complete statement. Sometimes, I deliberately work within these rules and it’s very difficult. At other times I just go with stream of thought but does stream of thought qualify as poetry? Probably not unless you are William Shakespeare. It may stand, nonetheless, for what it is - interesting thought streams. It’s like music. We can hear a tune in our head, sit down to a piano and try to pick it out without really knowing how to play. It may be a pretty tune with some serious potential but no matter what we do, we’re not going to sound like Mozart or Salieri or Liberace. These fellows knew the rules and if you want to play in that league, you have to study and learn, beginning with the basics. That’s where I feel I am at the moment with poetry. I may never get beyond first grade with it but it’s the joy of learning that matters to me most.
If the organisational aspect of the planet earth was to be given in your hands tomorrow, what will be the first thing on your list to change?
Oh, my goodness, the first thing I would do is ensure that it was never given into any one person’s hands ever again. The planet earth is in grave danger right now because of misplaced values and a horrible sense of entitlement. We need to learn how to respect our home and our family. Tonymac04 recently did a beautiful hub called Empathy and Life and my one directive as world organizer would be for everyone to read it. He’s also done a second one called Defining Empathy in Practice.
This question is a bit difficult, as we cannot really choose between friends. Unfortunately I will have to ask you this unfair question: Whose new hubs you tend to read first when the webmasters post the mail with list of new hubs published, and why?
That is a totally unfair question! There so many good writers on here that it’s impossible to list them all: akirschner is one I love for her wit and humor, Arthur Windermere for his magnificent hair (and he’s a brilliant writer, too), McHamlet because he’s, well, McHamlet and he just knocks your socks off, Merlin Fraser because he’s so versatile and surprising, Nellieanna because she’s absolutely brilliant and inspires me so much with her writing and the art that seems to flow from her in everything she does, Wayne Brown because he writes like film and makes every detail alive and important, ltfawkes who has me completely enthralled with the Fillmore to the Rescue series, epigramman who always makes me smile, habee who is nothing short of delicious, De Greek who was actually one of the first people here to encourage me so he’ll always be very special, and you of course. Your writing is honest and leaves one feeling that no matter what life hands you, the world is a pretty good place to be. There are so many more who deserve to be mentioned here. This is a fantastic place for those who like to write and even better for those who like to read.
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