Posts

Not Instagram worthy, my world is “good enough”

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Water feature with tomatoes in background My world is more “good enough” than it is airbrushed Instagram. While I love scrolling through endless photos and reels of perfect gardens , beautifully presented food , and well behaved canoe-riding cats , I live in unremarkable ordinariness, with just-in-time cooked meals and a cat who thinks nothing of waking me during the night for food that she then rejects in silent indignation. C'est la vie in my world.  I learned about ‘good enough’ from my father, whose middle name could have been ‘bodge up’. I can still hear him suggesting to my mother that whatever home repair he had just completed was surely good enough, followed by my mother’s long suffering sigh of acceptance — either of Dad’s quality of work or her need to do it better, do it right, herself.  Good enough is an art unto itself, interpreted by each practitioner in their own way. In my world, good enough is neither bodge up nor perfection; it is a finished and functional...

From Page to Stage: Where is the end?

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I had planned to write about my mother's death, but I ended up writing about my life. This is the mystery of the writing process. Or, maybe, it's no mystery at all. My mother dying brought me sharply into my own living -- living without her in this world.  The piece titled  "Where is the end?"  (below) is what I wrote for, and then performed at, the FROM PAGE TO STAGE event on May 8th, which I described in last week's post .  Should you wish to listen to the piece rather than read it,  I have recorded it  here . * Where is the end?   I was born into freedom —   an advantage I did not understand   until I met others who were born into not-freedom. For me, this freedom was   boundless nurture,   endless opportunity and   ever present love   My freedom came in the form of two parents, a mother and a father, who wanted me and loved me as a child should be: unconditionally   The sky the limit The ground secure The home saf...

From Page to Stage: my vision realized / more to come

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The PAGE TO STAGE venue: May 8, 2025 THE SHORT STORY It wasn’t the stage I had planned. It was not as big an audience as I had imagined. There were conversations I had not expected. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. And, all in all, it was a perfect evening. THE LONGER STORY Since early last year, I have been incubating the idea of writers performing their work on stage for a live audience . I didn’t know if my idea had ‘legs’, but I did know, absolutely, that I wanted to try it. Thanks to the encouragement and support of my stalwart writing partner and creative collaborator Deborah Schnitzer, I added the course to our online calendar — and people signed up! It would be a process of real-time discovery and creation; I was as anxious as I was excited. The initial group of seven writers met in November, coming together out of our shared interest to not only write our individual stories on the theme of ‘transformation’ but to perform them. By mid-January, we had gelled into a group of si...

What to pack for an unexpected journey

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I would pack this: my all-time favourite decades-old summertime T-shirt At the best of times, I am lousy at packing. I overpack or under-pack and, often, either way, I don’t end up with the item I really wish I had. Whether I approach it with great thought or without much thought, the task requires that I propel myself into the future and put things into a container that will help me get through what lies ahead.  But how can I know what lies ahead? The weather is unpredictable these days. How I'll feel on any given day is equally unpredictable. And how am I supposed to know just what I will want and need in order to manage what lands in my path on Day X down the road? I have been thinking about this as thousands of my fellow Manitobans have been thrust into making important decisions in the context of urgency, as they pack up and flee from the raging wildfires in the northern regions of this province . I have no perfect answers, just some thoughts, and they presume three things: Ha...