Grade 3: 1974, Van Bellingham Elementary School, Winnipeg, MB Teacher – Mrs. Delaquis We moved in the summer of 1974, from a townhouse in East Kildonan to a duplex in Southdale. Complete suburbia, right down to the white fence. The school was right at the end of our street, so now I could walk to and... Continue Reading →
Foodville, by Timothy Taylor. Book report #4 (2017)
Foodville: Biting dispatches from a food-obsessed city, by Timothy Taylor. Pub 2014. This little slip of a book is especially appealing to me as it highlights some of restaurant culture and history in Vancouver over the past 20 years, overlapping exactly with my own time period of dining here. From that point of view, this... Continue Reading →
Love Sonnets and Elegies, by Louise Labé. Book report #2 (2017)
Love Sonnets and Elegies, by Louise Labé. I was introduced to Louise Labé last year - a site on FaceBook posted one of her poems (Sonnet 18, "Kiss me, rekiss me, & kiss me again") on Valentines Day, as a promotion for a reissue of their English translation. I was hooked. A 16th-century quasi-feminist (I... Continue Reading →
Shady Characters, by Keith Houston. Book report #1 (2017).
Sh@dy Charac+ers: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks. By Ke!th H*uston. Pub. 2013. Fun and interesting read, but not for non-pedants, there is some very interesting history about lesser known marks (pilcrow, anyone?) and more common ones. The book is enlightening and fun, especially for fans of the written word. There... Continue Reading →
2017 Reading Challenge
I started a new list and challenge this year, borrowed from something I saw on Facebook - read 26 books this year, satisfying a list of criteria designed to keep the list diverse and encourage exploring new styles, genres, etc. With a few friends, we came up with our own version of the list, and... Continue Reading →
I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay? by Naomi Shihab Nye. Book report #3 (2017)
I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay? Tales of Driving and Being Driven, by Naomi Shihab Nye. Pub. 2007 I don't recall how I came to this book - likely another Facebook item. This is a well done collection of personal essays and memoirs by an active writer, teacher and poet based on her... Continue Reading →
Book of Treasures: Grade 2
Grade 2: 1973, Princess Margaret Elementary School, Winnipeg, MB. Teacher: Mrs. Soderstrom. I was added to Grade 2 quite shortly after starting Grade 1. Suddenly, I was with kids who were a year older than me and had been a cohort for a few years already. Even though we’d all been at the same school,... Continue Reading →
Book of Treasures: Kindergarten and Grade 1 – red, yellow, green
Kindergarten: 1972, Princess Margaret Elementary School, Winnipeg, MB. Teacher: Mrs. MacIntyre. This was the age of full-day kindergarten, complete with blackboards, reading time, nap time, arts and crafts. I remember lots of the basics - letters, numbers, chalkboard, colours, and construction paper. For those last two, I have one especially clear memory - frustration. We... Continue Reading →
Lists of 2016
Things that made me sad (a long list this year): Umberto Eco Prince David Bowie Alan Rickman Fort MacMurray Orlando, Turkey, Baghdad, Bangladesh Leonard Cohen Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds Things that irritated me: Christy Clark (a three-peat) Donald Trump and the entire GOP cabal Stanford rapist Brexit, especially Nigel Farage Pokemon Go Things that made... Continue Reading →
Item #16: Book of Treasures
Another digression from the rule about books, this book is more of a compendium of objects than an actual book. Kept within the suitcase of objects, the Book of Treasures is a scrapbook of sorts, an organized way of capturing things from school years. My mom started this for me in kindergarten, and I picked... Continue Reading →
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