Uniting for Women’s Rights

November 13, 2024.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The Underground Railroad was run by abolitionists and helped enslaved blacks flee to freedom in Northern States and Canada. Project 2025 wants to ban abortion nationwide, and make it difficult for women to access health care out of state. Is it time to band together in support of Woman’s Rights? Abortion is legal in Canada. […]

Can’t Breathe

November 6, 2024.Reading time less than 1 minute.

He put the people in place to undermine human rights, and give him immunity from crimes. He promised to end free and fair elections. He is arming himself with those who will do his bidding. America was warned of the danger. From up here in Canada, I wonder if this is how Rome’s neighbours felt […]

Patterns and Progress

September 4, 2024.Reading time 2 minutes.

I chose not to drink having grown up in a family of alcoholics. I wanted my children to have the experience of a parent who was present and predictable. It was an ideal, and certainly not perfect. My children, a generation removed from the trauma, choose to socialize with a drink. I’ve never seen any […]

War – Not War

July 7, 2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Somedays, words elude me. I want to say the war continues in Ukraine, but ‘war’ is not the right word. It suggests two-sided, as in a dispute that has escalated and come to blows. What happened in Ukraine is not that. It is an act of terrorism and greed at its most heinous. Ric and […]

Learning What Matters

February 21, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Parents brought children to the occupation in Ottawa. They set up camp on a main thoroughfare, in front of apartment buildings and retail shops, and obstructed the lives of others. They honked their big rig horns, left their diesel engines running day and night, and set up barbeques, and food tents, and bouncy castles, and […]

How To Start a Cult*

February 16, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Find an issue people are able to get passionate about, say, child trafficking. 2. Share information and increase the outrage. Start with facts, but insert the occasional manufactured story to test the waters. Maybe try Pizza Gate. 3. Increase paranoia by suggesting that so much is hidden from the public. Again, use actual cases, for […]

Don’t Take It Personally

February 9, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

Spurred on by my mother, I left home at the age of seventeen. It was the right thing for all involved, but when my parents replaced me with two cats, I couldn’t help but feel slighted: I’m deadly allergic to cats. When my mother-in-law spiked a meal with milk, hoping to prove that food allergies […]

Self-Portrait and Mountains

March 7, 2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

Many moons ago, I won an award for my artistic talents and was immediately counselled to drop the art program. That same year, I wrote my first novel, and after it was graded, I burnt it. I wasn’t meant to be creative, I decided, and obediently signed up for advanced math and other academic subjects. […]

Baseline Wrap-Up

September 30, 2018.Reading time 1 minute.

Before illness, I loved to play tennis. Although never the fastest player on the court, I appreciated the fact that tennis is also a game of strategy. My strategy was often to aim for the baseline, a shot that almost always caught my opponent off guard. Of course, missed shots were most often out-of-bounds. This […]

When Turning Off the News Is Not Enough

September 29, 2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

“I am glad that Bill Cosby got jail time,” I state, seated across from my husband at lunch. “I hope justice doesn’t stop there.” My husband shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He thought that Cosby should have house arrest. He doesn’t say it now – he’s too sensitive for that – but he has said […]

Limbo

With each stanzaI strive for an upswing –idle thoughts leadingto a crescendo… But exhaustion plaguesmy try, and fog coloursperspicacity, so my wordsland low, goal in limbo (Image my own)

Frigid (haiku)

An Escape Plan

An incorrigible hagengages my loneliness –like an assassin sniffing outany scent of vulnerability I am lowering standardsthis history of imprisonmentenabling inappropriate openings I cry for new perspectiveponder after boundariesintending to defend Like an unwanted bullseyeI am pursued on repeatmalice considering mea problem to be solved Who is this old womanwhose thoughts are daggerswho calls upon […]