Here are three more books you might like and my thoughts about them. Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent. Sometimes children fight for their parents’ affection and/or attention. This story is about what happens when that competition continues into adulthood. It involves three brothers, each of whom is not very likeable but each for different reasons. […]
I don’t dream. I can go for months or years, even, without being aware that I have dreamed. Once in a while I might be startled awake while dreaming, but after I have gone back to sleep I don’t remember the dream. I haven’t woken up in the morning remembering a dream for years, until […]
Today I have three books ready to give away and before I do that I thought I would write a short review of each of them. Where I live, the libraries are currently closed as are most retail stores, but thankfully Indigo (aka Coles, aka Chapters) bookstore is available online. I sometimes also get books […]
There are many ways in which you might obscure a message that you are trying to send. One of them is by burying the main idea somewhere in the middle of a body of text instead of at the beginning or at the end. Another is by providing too much background information. Similarly, being too […]
My therapist told me the other day that I need to find my people. I think she is right, and I am going to get on that, but it struck me when reading my local paper that Ray Wold, a complete stranger who comments on newspaper articles, will not be one of them. Because of […]
I interrupt this series of posts about murals to (a) apologize and (b) vent a little. The apology is necessary because I have no idea how my posts appear on your electronic device but I’m pretty sure my last couple of posts were a bit haphazard, graphically speaking. They looked more-or-less OK to me before […]
In a week when the person most qualified for the US presidency withdrew from the race, it seems appropriate to draw your attention to a woman who should have much greater historical significance. San Jose State University has a marvelous library, named for Dr. Martin Luther King, and within it is a room dedicated to […]
Happy New Year! It amazes me to realize that I have been maintaining this blog for a decade. I would not have imagined that to be possible when I began it. The years 2010-2019 have been full of new experiences, accidents, and opportunities. I have moved from Red Deer to Edmonton, traveled to England, Scotland, […]
When I first started this blog in 2010, WordPress provided me with a perfect platform. I didn’t have the skills to create a website, and WordPress made it easy for me. I was able to upload text or to create text directly on the site and soon thereafter to incorporate photos, all without technical ability […]
When I started this blog I had the idea that I wanted to write a book but needed to start with smaller writing projects. Snowbird of Paradise has been a good place for me to gain some writing practice, and I find that I like writing blog-size pieces about my life. The book I wanted […]
I am SO happy! I just got an email from a friend I haven’t seen or heard from since the 1970s. We were students together at Bretton Hall College back in the day when we wore bell-bottomed jeans. Isn’t that marvelous? I have been doing the dance of joy in my kitchen. A little while […]
OK, I was wrong. But did you have to be so nasty about it? A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of engaging in a comments-section discussion in the Guardian online. The topic was the world’s overpopulation and I threw in my, under-informed, two cents worth. I had forgotten that the online comments […]
Follow my blog with Bloglovin If you like reading and/or writing blogs, you may be interested in Bloglovin’. It’s a site designed just for people like us. I am signing on there today and will have my blog posts available there in future. My blog’s home is still WordPress and I will continue to link […]
You’ve heard of fake news, but have you heard of a fake personal email? Well, I got one this week. It has become more and more difficult for local businesses to attract our attention because they cannot afford ads on television, few people listen to radio, and flyers are often dropped directly into the recycling […]
I have been nominated for four blogging awards in the past, and I am pleased and honoured to have been considered. The process, however, requires a kind of chain-letter nomination of other bloggers, and this makes me a little uncomfortable. In the spirit of recognizing great blogs, though, I do want to thank the people who […]
Try explaining why using “had had” or “that that” can be grammatically correct. For examples: “The woman had had a bad day,” and “I can see that that bothers you.” Go ahead. I’ll wait. This week I tried to explain this to my English as a Foreign Language student, and instead simply gave more examples […]
PowerPoint must be the most popularly misused software on the planet. Ever since it first appeared, we have used it badly and for all the wrong reasons. It has so much potential, but we have really made a muck of it, most of the time. Printouts of Slides Yesterday I went to a training workshop […]
Someone on the Nextdoor message feed yesterday was complaining about a homeless encampment near his house. He wrote, sarcastically, “Wow, what a wonderful site!” What he probably intended was to write “sight” not “site.” The message could have been read to mean that he liked the encampment, or that he liked the view, when in […]
How it works This how seasonal affective disorder works. It keeps you in the house, makes you regret every bad decision you ever made, bashes you over the head with your personal shortcomings, and then teases you with all the things you could have done but didn’t. Here I sit in my little apartment, […]
