Five Years a Writer

Hope is not a wing and a prayer. It is a commitment to the future grounded in action.  Hope is a tiny vision that, when taken seriously, when fuelled, expands to fill the mind that spawned it and the body that wants to experience it. So, think on what is your most urgent need, your most fervent desire, and make a plan to make it happen. Make a five-minute plan or make a five-year plan. But make a plan.  It’s what Dale Spender , an Australian feminist I met decades ago in Edmonton, did when she wanted to quit smoking. Whenever she felt the urge for a smoke — and for many days that urge arose every ten minutes, her plan was to get up, leave the house and walk around the block. She did this until her desire to quit became the reality of her having quit. Her plan was both a 10-minute one and a life-long one, and her originating action was as simple as going for a walk.  For 15-year-old Greta Thunberg, the plan was to sit, alone, outside the Swedish parliament to protest the lack of

Back in the days when we could, a few of us were lingering over a meal, and the conversation turned to the notion of hope.  Some eschewed it as emotional pablum that blinkers the truth of the world. Others described it as a fleeting emotion unworthy of traction. Me? I rather liked the idea of it, and I’ve been noodling on the controversy of hope ever since.   To hope. To wish. To dream. To desire: The meaning of these different words puts them all in relationship to each other, for they all point to a feeling or aspiration for something that is not yet in hand.   If we can see that thing in our mind’s eye, then what better way of getting it in hand than by acknowledging it and articulating our hope (dream, wish, desire) for it.   Now, sitting on the sofa eating bonbons won’t bring it to us. Action of one kind or another is needed. So hope alone is not the answer. But combine a sense of hope with a commitment to act, and I think you might find yourself closer to where (or who or how) yo

The first piece in my  COVID-19: end date unknown  series. There’s doodling. There’s making art. And then there is producing art. I have sometimes doodled nonsense on a piece of paper and often made art in the form of collages, but in the past year I have discovered the satisfaction and joy of producing art.  Last year I wrote  about digital archives that were gathering ordinary people's diaries of their experience during what, back then, was still the oddity of a COVID lockdown. I had been making collages as a way to channel my wide-ranging emotions into something productive and creative. I enjoyed the process and, as is my want, dated each one, but it wasn’t until well into the process that it dawned on me that I could (should) submit them to one of those public archives. Why not?  And so I did, finally, on June 20th last year, upload a file that included a cover, an introduction, pictures of the collages, and explanatory text for each one. That act transformed my ‘making’ of

Many things can divide a household. In mine, it is boiled eggs. Who would have thought such a simple food item could cause such consternation at the breakfast table?  Before it even gets to the table, the divide is evident: How do you prick the egg to stop it from splitting open in the boiling water? I favour the little gadget designed especially for that task; Val prefers the rogue method of firmly holding the raw egg and pricking it carefully — oh so carefully — with a sharp knife. I look on in horror.  Once cooked (for how long, you ask? Too tricky a question to answer here) the egg is put into a pretty egg cup and, if I don’t trust the cooking time (see parenthetic comment  above), kept warm for continued cooking with a charming Laura Ashley egg cozy, purpose made. Those Brits know how to treat their eggs.  Now comes the real challenge: opening the egg.  I tend to slash mine, sometimes hitting the yolk that then drips down the egg cup. Quelle horreur. Val’s head is in her hands at

I have just finished reading  Nomadland by journalism professor Jessica Bruder, on which the Oscar-winning movie is based. It’s an unvarnished look at what old age in America looks like for those who, for a variety of reasons, find themselves without a house-roof over their head but with keys to a vehicle in their pocket.   The surface story is one of freedom of the road: downsize your possessions, leave your rent behind and hit the open trail in a van, a camper or even just a car. But the underlying tale is one of financial insecurity suffered as a result of divorce, illness, bankruptcy or redundancy. The impact of any one of these circumstances can be devastating to anyone and is definitely so in a country without a decent social safety net. On the road, you’ll meet hundreds of others (not all, but many of them seniors) who make ends meet by working seasonally in Amazon warehouses (walking as many as 15 miles per shift in the enormous spaces that house the stuff we order online) o

For a time during my early undergrad days, I lived in a furnished studio apartment on campus. I had lucked into it as a convenient and affordable place of my own. My culinary skills were seriously lacking and Mum rescued me more than once with a decent meal, but over time I learned how to manage my needs, my time and my finances for a decent student-quality of life.  It was at the end of term that I truly relished having my own place and space. I spent hours writing final papers, moving from one assignment to the next, my desk piled with materials sorted by deadline. When I completed one, I simply moved the pile to the floor and tackled the next one in line.  The result was a giant mess in my one-room space, but it represented progress and my version of the natural order of things: organize the work, do the work, ignore the mess and, when the moment is right (i.e., the final deadline has been met), tidy it all up. And celebrate.  In these early days of our prairie spring, I am thin

The other day, I sent my mother a this 'n that box. Believe me when I say there was nothing extraordinary in it, but putting it together and sending it off broke the tedium of the pandemic for me. Receiving it quite unexpectedly broke the tedium for my mother, and that made the box and its content spectacular. But a daily box of this 'n that would lose the magic, would not induce excitement in either giver or receiver. So we are stuck with the tedium of our COVID-restricted world — and I think that what we need to cultivate is resilience . Thanks to a Google search I found Dr. Lucy Hone, who says that resilience is a life skill that can be learned. Her TEDx Talk describes three strategies that can be employed to help develop resilience in the face of the COVID tedium that I am pretty sure we are all experiencing --  Understand that shit happens in everyone's life. Do not ask, Why me? when lockdown keeps you locked up. Instead ask, Why not me? Then get on with it. No