Five Years a Writer

Dateline Winnipeg, Monday, October 29, 2018:  Her pink hat caught my attention and drew my focus to the rest of her - the stance was more planted than a regular transit user normally takes when waiting for the bus, and the space between her and the other woman was a bit closer than I would expect in a public place. Then I noticed that the second woman was rooting around in her bag. Ah, I realized what was going on. A panhandler. Female (the pink hat gave her away, though it had no pussy ears; it was just a pink toque). With more than an edge of assertion. A hard tension emanated from her. The transit loop was not empty of other people, but it was still early morning dusk, and an encounter long in the past with an aggressive glue-sniffing woman has put me on perpetual guard, so I moved along and away towards my own stop. From a distance, I kept an eye on the pink hat and, eventually, saw it move with its owner across the street and away. This was my second encounter in the short

There’s something about a byline I simply and truly love. There it is: my name at the top of a bunch of words that I’ve put together in a way that makes them worthy of being read. Of course, a self-published blog is a bit of a cheat, as I’m in charge of the words and the publishing of them. (But, then, we know that the power of the press sits with she who owns it, right?) In any event, I’ve been thinking about bylines recently and reviewing the ones I have had over the past few decades. My byline has appeared in numerous community-level newsletters, a few regional publications, a national magazine, and one national newspaper. I particularly love that last one – my byline on the Facts & Arguments essay in the Globe and Mail. Oh boy, was that an exciting day for me. But it was an exciting day more than eight years ago now, and I’m still trying to produce a second essay worthy of getting my byline into that national newspaper. I’ve made several attempts, but none of the