Although I’m much more of a non-fiction reader than a lover of fiction, I’ve been captivated recently by Barry Eisler’s series of John Rain thrillers (the first one is Rain Fall) about a Japanese-American assassin who specializes in making the deaths of his victims appear to be from natural causes.

Eisler has a varied background, including stints in the CIA and as a student of the martial arts; both experiences feed into his character development of Rain.

The earlier novels are set in Tokyo, with later ones in Hong Kong, Macau, Rio and a host of other wonderful cities that I’ve either visited myself or always wanted to see.

It’s the Japan-focused ones that really grab me; I so miss being in that incredibly foreign, frustrating, mysterious and yet comfortable environment. In my time living there, it was SO different from everything that I’d ever experienced. I grew quite weary of feeling like a complete nincompoop (mostly because I couldn’t speak the language nor read any of the signs in kanji) yet there was a civility and kindness there that made me feel at home even as I felt so lost.

Once I stopped trying to figure it out, I relaxed and figured it out. Isn’t that always the way?

I first stumbled upon Eisler in an interview about ebooks and self-publishing with author Joe Konrath. That blog post single-handedly made me consider self-publishing for a book I’m writing – the Elastic Waist Entrepreneur.

Here’s Eisler talking about his creative process – if you want to visit Japan for awhile, I recommend his thrillers to take you there.

Here’s the direct link to the Eisler video on YouTube, if you can’t see the embed box below.

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Canada Day, the first of July , is celebrated with even more enthusiasm than usual this year, as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be visiting Canada during their first official visit since their marriage on 29 April — a ceremony which millions of people around the globe enjoyed watching.

The Duke and Duchess will attend a concert in Ottawa on Canada Day, featuring a range of Canadian musicians, and it’s expected that musical events will feature in the other stops on their visit as they travel from Montreal to Prince Edward Island to the Northwest Territories to Calgary.

Care to check out some fine Canadian musicians yourself? Here are three ideas for a a soundtrack for your Canada Day celebrations:

Ian Tyson knows the range and ranch life of Canada’s west first hand. He knows music first hand as well. He brings both together in a way that catches moments and memories of the landscape, work, and people of the rocky mountain west. It is a cowboy music for today’s world. One place to hear this is his latest album, Yellowhead to Yellowstone.

The men of Le Vent du Nord draw from a different aspect of Canadian life and history for their music. They hail from Québec, where French is spoken more often than English and where the intermingling of French, Celtic, and English lives and history fuel a music that is wildly energetic on the one hand and offers lyrics that tell stories drawn from the past, on the other. La Part du Feu is a good place to feel this energy and hear these stories.

Cape Breton at the northern tip of Atlantic Canada in Nova Scotia is the home to a music shaped by wind, water, forest, Scottish heritage, and its own unique place in the world. Natalie MacMaster uses her fiddle to speak of and to all of this, at times playing tunes that could come straight from the highlands of Scotland and at other times creating music that could be nothing but a twenty first century take on that heritage. Whichever sort of tune she is playing, once you’ve hear her you’ll know tis music could come from nowhere but Cape Breton. Listen to MacMaster’s way with music on her album Blueprint.

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Last week, I went to the Aperture Gallery to catch the last day of a small installation of Tim Hetherington‘s work.  On display was Diary, an experimental 19 minute film that was a memoir of his life as a war photographer/documentary film maker — a life which ended this past April, on the job in Libya. There was also Sleeping Soldiers, which was filmed at the same time as Restrepo.

You can see both films online here; Sleeping Soldiers was displayed on three screen at the gallery and it’s not quite the same for home viewing, but Diary loses none of its power displayed n the computer.

I’m not a war photographer, or a war journalist, obviously. While I have visited many troubled countries (and name me one country that’s trouble-free), I don’t tend to find myself in places that feature open gun fire. I tend to travel to places where people like to vacation. So I really didn’t really want to feel a tug of identification with the dislocation that Hetherington captures in Diary — the strange juxtaposition of life at home and life in places far less comfortable — frankly, I don’t think I’ve earned it. At the time that Hetherington was gathering his footage, I was mostly traveling in the world’s prettier, peaceful places.

In fact, it is hard to believe that we were traveling on the same planet, at the same time.

As shown by the upcoming royal visit to Canada and California of newly married’s Will and Kate, it’s almost impossible for royalty to go anywhere in the world without pre-planning, media releases, and huge entourages.

But in New Zealand recently, one royal visitor – an Emperor Penguin all the way from Antarctic – managed to do just that. He simply turned up on New Zealand shores last week, completely alone, without fanfare or entourage.

In fact, the visit was so unexpected that stunned residents, on coming across the emperor penguin standing on the sand at Peka Peka Beach on the Kapiti Coast, thought their eyes were playing tricks on them.

It was, after all, a most unusual sight.

While many breeds of penguins make their home in New Zealand, emperor penguins do not (in fact, the only other sighting of a emperor penguin in New Zealand was in 1967 at Southland’s Oreti Beach.)

Like most royalty, the newly arrived emperor penguin (dubbed ‘Happy Feet) soon attracted camera happy crowds and media who smelled a story.

It also attracted it’s own bodyguards, local residents who, having quickly became highly protective of their visitor, were determined to ensure that the crowds (and the media) kept their distance.

But Happy Feet wasn’t so happy.

Homesick and stranded on a beach thousands of miles from home, he was becoming dehydrated and overheated and started eating the sand (possibly mistaking it for snow) and driftwood. It was a diet guaranteed to make him became lethargic, weak, and dangerously unwell.

Emergency medical treatment was needed if the emperor penguin was to have any chance of survival.  Department of Conservation officials transported Happy Feet to Wellington Zoo for emergency surgery.

A team of Vets and the Department Head of Endoscopy at Wellington Hospital went to work scoping and removing clumps of sand (watch video footage of procedure here) that were starting to form into lumps of concrete from Happy Feet’s stomach.  This procedure, along with intravenous rehydration therapy, looks like it might just get Happy Feet back on his feet.

Then it will just be a question finding a way to help Happy Feet get back home.

(photo credit: Tony Lewis)

Flags, fireworks, parades, barbeque, people in Uncle Sam hats: all of these are likely to be part of red white and blue Fourth of July celebrations. There will be a good bit of regional pride mixed too, no doubt, shown in foodstuffs such as pierogies in Indiana, blue corn tacos in New Mexico, cherry pie in Michigan, and fresh sweet corn just about everywhere. As you are getting ready for your Fourth of July festivities.a fine soundtrack would be the music of three songwriters who draw deeply from the roots of American imagination

Caroline Herring is a Mississippi native who has traveled to China, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom with her music, and has lived in Texas, Washington DC, and Georgia. She brings all those things to her music, and to those experiences she brings the eye and heart of a storyteller whose imagination was first formed by the deep south. For your fourth of July listening, I’d recommend her album Wellspring. On it Herring will take you on a journey between connection and independence framed in images of the American West on Colorado Woman, a song she wrote with her husband, Joseph Crespino. There are meditations on love present and past in Magnolias and MGM Grand, and an unexpected story drawn from southern history that resonates through today in the song Mistress. There is a fine contemplation of the connections of people across time, history, and landscape in Trace. Herring sings in a lovely alto with a storyteller’s and musicians sense of phrasing that well supports her songs.

Trains, road trips, late night honky tonks, stormy weather, loss and healing and celebration: Louisa Branscomb has hit on all these things in songs she’s written for bluegrass and country artists across the years. Rather than sing herself on the album I’ll Take Love she invited a range of top singers and players to join in for a celebration of her music. Branscomb and award winning bluegrass bassist Missy Raines co produced the album. Top bluegrass singer Dale Ann Bradley takes the lead on that title track, with back up vocals from a classy pair of singers, Alison Krauss and Steve Gulley. You’ll not have to to know a thing about all the recognitions these three have won to enjoy their collaboration, which well serves the reflective song on work, family, a life well lived, and what may be next. John Cowan lends his soulful country blues tenor to the story of finding faith through obstacles called Stormy Night, and Grammy nominee Claire Lynch considers life’s not always clear paths in Your Amazing Grace. Really fine singing, good stories, a bluegrass bent to the music, and creative musicianship from the backing players, especially Alison Brown on banjo and Stuart Duncan on fiddle. Branscomb herself sits in on guitar, too.

Matraca Berg takes a walk through her grandparents’ farm in the title track of The Dreaming Fields. The farm is to be sold off as building lots, and the song becomes an understated and powerful look at change, change that happens across the long and short span of a life’s time. You and Tequila is likely to be a summertime hit (Kenny Chesney, I think, has recorded it). O Cumberland is a love song to a river, a place, and a time. South of Heaven adds a little heard voice to the costs of war, while A Cold Rainy Morning in London in June is a thoughtful and romantic song of love and distance. It has been more than decade since Berg has released an album, a decade in which she’s written many hits for other artists. The Dreaming Fields has been well worth the wait.

Whatever landscape might be yours this fourth of July time, the words and music of these artists will help you understand it. Give a listen.