Five Years a Writer

I love the radio. It fires my imagination with words from which I build stories and images and meaning in my mind.  I love the different accents I hear on air these days and I love the growing world of podcasts — those offshoots of, or replacements for, radio shows.   But I don’t love all the voices that float across the airwaves. Some mumble. Others garble. Still others over-emote, the speaker thrusting themselves at me through the radio. Less is more, say I. Leave me room to make the story my own; don’t invade my space with your Self. Back off. Tone it down. Let the words build the story and create the impact in my mind.  But my real pet peeve is the breathy voices. The small voices. The timid voices. These don’t take up enough room in my radio. They have no gravitas. I’ve noticed this particularly with recent new voices reading the news on my local station. If anything needs gravitas, it is the news. Present it with confidence and show that confidence with a clear voi...

A tidy fridge is like a well-written text: elements carefully placed, correctly sorted, well structured. Open it up and you know what you're looking at, what you're getting into: post-modern chaos or zen-like haiku. Like any text, the content of a fridge can benefit from a good edit, a ruthless sorting, a thorough proofing. Dig behind the mayo jar for the carton of cream, bring it forward, on the right — where the dairy goes. Move the cat food down below, where it belongs — beside the leftovers from (human) dinner. Keep the veggies in the bottom left drawer, the fruit in the bottom right. Want the yogurt? Check up top on the right.  Unless a post-modern user was there before you, in which case it’s as likely mixed up with the cat food as it is on the dairy shelf. Jangles my nerves.   I like the fridge in haiku form: tidy, clean, ordered. Val has a more post-modern take: anything goes…more or less anywhere. We rub along, but sometimes end up with two of something we need only o...

I remember the story so well. I heard it on the radio many years ago, about a woman whose husband had died in a horrific plane crash at sea. The accident had been news many months previously; the story I was listening to that evening was of the moment when the woman was given back her husband's wedding ring that had been retrieved off the sea bed.  His death had been anguish for her, but having the ring returned to her was a moment of great anxiety. What would it be like, she said, to have the ring back -- handed  to her by a stranger, as if it were just something and not the most precious thing that represented all her dead husband meant to her.  She was excited and also apprehensive. She need not have worried, for the man charged with returning the ring understood what was at stake and had prepared accordingly.  When he reached into his pocket to retrieve what would clearly be the ring, he pulled out not a...

I like to walk. My body moves in one direction along the sidewalk and my mind wanders down whatever paths of contemplation I need or want at the time.  Most of my walking happens in an urban context, which means it happens in neighbourhoods that have been planned by professionals called urban planners. They design and then someone builds sidewalks and pathways that, for some reason or other, the professionals deem to be the right way to get from A to B.  However, humans walk those paths (as do four-legged creatures, likely, but this is not about them) and, therefore, we don’t always follow the prescribed plan or path. Sometimes we deviate and we create a better — the best — way to get from A to B.  Those lines, those paths, have a name, an actual term that describes them quite perfectly: They are called desire lines . I first learned of them from an article in the Autumn 2020 issue of the University of Alberta’s New Trail magazine, and I have since taken them for an...

They say it isn’t really courage if you don’t have a choice about your action. The house is on fire so you either jump out the window or risk dying in the flames. The child is clearly drowning, so you dive into the river and pull her out. Not courage; just the thing to do. “Anyone would have done the same,” according to so many of those who are cited for bravery.  But I say pshaw. Acting in the face of fear or at risk of danger to oneself surely means having chosen to do one thing — acting — rather than the other thing — not acting.  This question is much on my mind these days, as I am reading the biography* of Virginia Hall , an American who in WWII was a spy and an agent in France for both the UK and the US. My goodness, I sometimes have to close the book and concentrate on just breathing, because the story is so fraught with close calls and risky plans that I can barely bear it.  And then I wonder. Could I do that? Could I have ever been like her in occupied France? R...

It was a sunny morning, so I was eager to open the blinds and look outside. No dog walkers yet. No birds of note. Oh well. I went into the kitchen and made our tea.  My second look outside made me shriek, "Val: Greta's gone!" I roared into the front yard and, indeed, Greta was gone. I saw what I had not seen at first glance: the empty spot. The #ClimateAction sign I had had made and been displaying in the front yard for months now was gone. Damn! That was the second one taken by someone. I only hoped they wanted Greta Thunberg and her call to action on climate change for their own yard — and not their garbage bin.  I came inside and made coffee.  A short while later, I went outside again, coffee in hand, and stood at the end of the front path, lamenting quietly to myself the state of the world that would see a political sign stolen from a front yard.  And then I turned around, toward the house. And I saw Greta.  In a flash, I remembered that, in fact, it had bee...

This year on Mother's Day I celebrate my mother, Anne, who is the real deal in all things loving and kind.  She is generous in spirit and in fact. She is a listener second to none, always interested in good conversation. In short, she's great.     Anne having tea with Barbara,  who took the pic Having worked professionally as a writer in her career, she has in recent years penned several memoir vignettes about her early life and written short stories for the grand-sons.  Together, she and I are A & A Press -- she writes and I design her writing into  published pieces for family and friends to enjoy.  As an artist, Mum was an enthusiastic participant in our summer 2018 Art Camp at Clifftop Cottage. Every day we chose a theme and then drew, painted or collaged an image to represent it. Such fun!  Today and every day, I love having Anne as my mother. I share her with my siblings, Katy and Charles; our partners Val, Guy and Lisa; wi...