street: Browse The Strips

Friday March 29, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I once spent all day hiding in the lane because I was afraid my mom would find out that I had broken the milk bottles on our front porch. It was an accident. I’d been swinging a hula hoop and hit them by accident. In the end, she was angrier at me because I’d gone missing, and not because I’d knocked over the bottles.

Sunday April 14, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I read somewhere that a composer looked at birds perched on wires and saw a musical pattern in the way they positioned themselves. He then set these patterns to music. Anyone know if this is true?

Friday May 10, 2019

Lynn's Comments: It did rain. I was wearing a light blue coat and the red colouring dripped down onto my collar and shoulders. I didn't want to spoil our walk, so I didn't run home until the colour ruined my coat.

Thursday June 13, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Having Elizabeth wear glasses separated my real life daughter even more from the character in the strip. Glasses gave Elizabeth a new look and something else to worry about! Things like this marked the growth of the characters and the passage of time. In FBorFW, everyone aged and changed.

Friday July 5, 2019

Lynn's Comments: This idea became the basis for one of the animated shows we did in Ottawa. I enjoyed working with two other writers who were able to stretch a few cartoons into a 26-minute special.

Sunday July 7, 2019

Lynn's Comments: This was done just as the helmet laws were getting serious. The youngest riders were all wearing them. Older kids defied their parents' warnings and went for "the wind in their hair."

A young boy we knew well was critically injured when he suddenly swerved across the street in front of his house— right into the path of an oncoming car. He was not wearing a helmet and hit his head on the edge of the sidewalk. He was raced to the hospital in critical condition. The driver was entirely blameless. The boy’s parents were given the awful choice of surgery, which would likely result is a seriously brain damaged child, or taking him off life support. His mom said, "Let’s give him a chance." The surgery and recovery are quite a story but he survived, and with time and lots of therapy, he grew up to be a healthy and productive young man. Ironically, one of the postoperative requirements was that he wear a helmet for awhile to protect his head. It was a happy ending to a nearly tragic accident and every kid in town afterwards wore a helmet when they rode their bikes.

Wednesday July 10, 2019

Lynn's Comments: My summer job was always in my parents' jewellery store. My main duty was to dust and wipe fingerprints off the glass counters. I was quite envious of a friend of mine who got a job serving ice cream at one of the malls. She had a cute uniform and was always talking to kids our age. It was a very busy, social place. Later, when I told her how much I wished I'd had her job, she said that after standing all day digging hard ice cream out of the freezer, her back ached, her feet hurt and her arms had never ached so badly in her life! …The grass is always greener on the other side!

Monday August 5, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Here's an interesting note about the animated version of this story: Animation is an extremely expensive way to make a moving picture. The studio often runs out of money, which is when some awful compromises are made. By the time we got to this scene, we were told that there was no more money for animation, the storyboard imagery would have to be cut, and that the fact that Michael was on a busy street corner with people and cars going by would have to be "fixed in post." This means that the editor, camera operator and people in the sound department (post production), would have to make the busy street "happen" without the visual imagery. If you watch the film you will see that every time there is a close-up of Michael and the hot dog stand, there is a flurry of sound. Cars, horns, people walking, dogs barking...all these sounds are inserted and the viewer believes that a load of activity is going on. Then, when there is a long shot, showing the hot dog stand from across the street, for example, there is nothing going on in the background at all! This was a very clever way to eliminate a lot of expensive work. This happened far too often when we did the animated shows and the results weren't always successful. The words, "fix it in post" are a joke in the industry, meaning that a studio will often leave the most impossible "fixes" to the post production crew!

Tuesday January 7, 2020

Lynn's Comments: Dr. Enkin was the author of several obstetrics text books and his opinion was: "Childbirth isn't a disease and shouldn't necessarily happen in a hospital." This was something I believed, too.