I despise Margaret Atwood. Living as I do in Toronto, such a statement may come off sounding like blasphemy. How can you say such a thing? ask the pious onlookers. It is precisely because I am from Toronto that I despise her.
Not All Violins, ed. Charlotte Caron
This is not so much a book review as it is a reflection which uses a book as its point of departure. Not All Violins is written by the Barb Wire Collective, a group of women who gave themselves this name as an affectionate nod to a mentor, Barbara Elliott…
Convergence, yes, but my cell phone still sucks
Before Christmas, Rogers was advertising 6 months free on a 2 year family plan. With 2 teenagers who are getting harder and harder to keep track of, maybe it was time to join the 21st century and equip the whole family with cell phones.
Membership has its Privileges
My daughter is thirteen and Sunday June 4th is the date set for her confirmation. Traditionally, confirmation is a rite of passage, a transition from youth into a full and adult participation in the life of a church community.
Journaling
About 12 years ago, someone suggested that I keep a journal. Since then, and in widely different contexts, several others have made the same recommendation. At first, I didn’t know where to begin. A blank page can be daunting. Should I fill it—like a daytimer—with the trivial details of my day-to-day living? Or should I gush with the intimate cares of my heart?
Fucking High
On Sunday, my daughter had her first confirmation class. The minister, to his credit, asked the kids to bring along a song—whatever they happened to be listening to—so that he could get a feel for where they are in their lives. My daughter asked if I could burn “You’re Beautiful” to a CD for her.
What’s A Memoir Supposed To Remember
When I first heard that Oprah Windy was going to interview James Frey, author of the memoir, A Million Little Pieces, that she was angry and felt betrayed because Mr. Frey’s account appeared to deviate significantly from the truth, that she was going to haul him onto the carpet and call him to account in a million little living rooms across America—when I heard all this righteous indignation rising up from the south—I chalked it up to another instance of maudlin-sappy-slightly-self-indulgent-Oprah-strutting.
An Anthropologist on Mars
I’m not sure that Roman Catholics would appreciate me comparing their theological ground to Mars, but Oliver Sacks’ phrase pretty much describes how I felt last Friday when I went to Regis College to listen as Professor John Dadosky presented a paper: “Towards a Fundamental RE-Interpretation of Vatican II.”
©opyright ©oming to ©anada
As election day in Canada approaches (Jan. 23rd), voters have had their sensibilities assaulted by the usual carping that comes from candidates who have nothing substantive to work with. The current liberal government has stumbled—and will probably fall—not because it took a stand on an important issue (since that would be an honourable defeat) but because of corruption.
Runaway by Alice Munro
So there I was, two weeks ago, lounging by the side of a pool in Punta Cana, reading Runaway, Alice Munro’s latest collection of short stories, when a woman in a bikini stopped at the foot of my chair and said: “I’ve started reading that, too. Just finished the first story. So what’s with the goat? Did the husband really kill the goat?”
A New Year, New Words
I would like to mark the passage of time by noting some linguistic events, and what better linguistic genius to consult than George W. Bush. In addition to his legendary Bushisms (itself a neologism meaning something like “blundering non-sequitur”), Bush is credited with notable contributions to the English (or at least American) dictionary…
The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur W. Frank
In anticipation of a new course I will be taking this term, Spirituality, Health & the Christian Life, I read one of the required texts, The Wounded Storyteller, just for a taste. I was stunned at how closely Frank’s account of illness matches my own experience and at how closely his language (he might call it his discourse) speaks to the way I orient myself to my world.
Madness, Religion and Aldous Huxley
I first read Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun while riding a bus to Ithaca, N.Y. during a high school music trip when I was 15. Returning to the book more than 25 years later, I have made several discoveries.
The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski
Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, The Painted Bird, filled with vignettes of violence perpetrated against innocence, is more compelling than ever in an age when media presents us with confirmation that such things occur on a daily basis in our world. Whereas CNN’s truth is of one sort, Kosinki’s is of quite another.
Being There First
The greatest opportunity of the blogosphere (according to an army of self-proclaimed, twenty-something pundits) is its democratization of front-line journalism. Anybody with a phone cam and some server space can, by virtue of being there first, break the next big story.