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 […]

“Before We Were Yours”: A Review

July 24, 2018.Reading time 1 minute.

Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate introduces the shameful story of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, an organization run by Georgia Tann, a woman who made money by abducting poor children from their homes and selling them into adoption. Wingate’s novel imagines what life would be like for siblings taken from their homes and […]

Coincidence?

June 27, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

One of my favourite podcasts is The Moth where people share real life stories based on a theme. An episode I listened to recently focused on coincidence. According to Oxford Dictionary (online edition) the definition of coincidence is: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection. This particular podcast includes stories replayed […]

We Are Called

January 29, 2017.Reading time 2 minutes.

My husband is googling “The Declaration of Independence”. I am just trying to breathe: a tempest of emotions, thoughts, and fears attacking rationality. I try to think back to another time when I felt such terror…to reassure myself that this will all pass…but I think about my son who recently converted to Muslim for the […]

The Way It Is (tanka)

At every turna challenge – prefer scenicforays, encounterrocky climes – ironic twists,stretching this reluctant soul (Image my own)

Doctoring

Doctoring broken hearts –my own legacy a training ground –like an anesthesiologist I keep the patient breathing,asleep – muted by kindness,unconscious and unable to react. Why? Because lulling others is moreeffective than operating on self –faux obligations such a balm Administer lidocaine to the woundsNumbness preferable to open-heartedinvestigation… no sutures strong enoughto remedy internal bleeding […]

Facades

Somehow I knew his mask was porcelain –impossible to hide the soul’s lightreflected in troubled eyes… I played along though,humoured his self-deceptionnodded at assertions of calm Knew that one day the facade would crackthe mask would slip and the rage escape Why I didn’t run; I do not knowMaybe it was recognition –my own countenance […]