I have been conned more than once, and each time I blamed myself. I kicked myself. I felt guilty. I found it very, very hard to talk about because it is embarrassing to have been conned. I know I’m not alone in this. Many of you have been conned, too. Whether you have been conned […]
The problem with “He said, she said” is that it isn’t fair. In our criminal justice system, we always have the presumption of innocence. That’s fine and good, but when there are no witnesses and there is no evidence, there can be no guilty verdict. Many people, mostly women, have been on the losing end […]
This is the story of how a bracelet goes missing and a hairdresser gives good advice. How It All Started The morning that I was due to leave London and return to Canada, a bomber in Manchester killed twenty-three people and injured one hundred and sixteen others. It was horrific. I turned on my sister’s television […]
Sometimes, quitting is the smart thing to do. I was given a really difficult jigsaw puzzle for Christmas from someone who knows I like puzzles to be challenging. I started the project with optimism and enthusiasm, and the first day of sorting and setting up looked like this: I had found the edge pieces and […]
Thirty or forty years ago, being harassed, fondled, propositioned and even assaulted by men was not unusual. The problem for Bill Cosby is that this is a new era. If every man who had behaved as he is accused of behaving were to be vilified in the press, there would be no room for any […]
As the world mourns the death of Robin Williams, my thoughts turned to the anguish that his family and friends must be experiencing. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote about five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) in her book On Death and Dying. This has been widely accepted as useful in helping people who […]
I got rid of it. That stuff that hung around in the garage making me feel guilty? It’s gone. Today I took my golf clubs and my cross-country skis and sold them at the recycled sports gear store. Well, to be honest, I only sold the clubs. They didn’t want the skis. The fellow was […]
I keep a list of ideas for writing, most of which I don’t use. As I look at it now I think I should probably just write a blog that is composed entirely of my list of ideas. No context. No explanation. Just the list. It could be poetry. Someone might even think it was […]
Sometimes, if I don’t have something planned for my day, I do absolutely nothing. I sit on the couch and watch movies on TV while noodling about on my laptop computer. I suppose I could justify it by saying I’m networking and reading the news, but really I’m being totally idle, and the longer I […]
There’s an exercise franchise that I quite like. It uses a variety of exercise machines placed in a circle, and members spend a minute at each station. Genius. Fifteen stations, one minute each, twice; half an hour and we’re done. Bingo. Exercise guilt assuaged. The trouble is it comes with some staff who, it seems, […]
Today, I checked my workplace email and yelled “Oh no!” very loudly; my neighbours upstairs probably heard me. My work-related email, that I had deliberately kept free of personal mail, now included an email from Isaac. This is a circumstance as unwelcome and unexpected as spilling red wine on a white blouse during a first […]
Snowbird of Paradise 