Category: Uncategorized
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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
HERE TODAY….. … AND GONE TOMORROW Best to enjoy them while you can. WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: “White Settler Reserve: New Iceland and the Colonization of the Canadian West” by Ryan Eyford, UBC Press, 2016 My son says he saw this book on the shelves at the University of Manitoba bookstore. It would, I think,…
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How did it get so late so soon?
My apologies for plagiarizing Dr. Seuss. But he is always so right. WHAT I’VE READ: “A Climate of Fear” by Fred Vargas, translated from the French by Sian Reynolds, Harville Secker, 2016 Fred Vargas is one of my favourite crime writers. A historian and archeologist by profession, she has four times won the CWA International…
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Reading, wRiting and floweRs
What I’ve Read Since Last Time “The Crescent Onion” – by Val Pattee Retired Major-General Val Pattee says in his note to readers that he wanted “his plots and characters to be believable, grounded in real world events and people, with actions that paralleled the daily news”. Pattee says that the daily intelligence that crossed…
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Of monsters and angels and things inbetween
Jager, our sixteen-month-old dog, has discovered that cookies taste good. So far we haven’t found any that he won’t eat. Put a hand in the cookie jar and he is there at your feet. Bring up frozen cookies from the basement freezer and he is waiting at the top of the stairs. If both my husband and I are…
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Baby dolls and maple leaves
My husband and I went to an auction sale last weekend. On display were tables of glassware and collectibles and rows of antique and vintage furniture. I could have bid on an icebox like the one in my grandmother’s porch when I was a child. Or a wall-mounted phone like the kind that was in…
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The number 30
Today is my daughter’s 30th birthday. As she reminded me lately, years are a man made construct. Their meaning is negligible, unless you make it so. But my daughter is still being asked for her ID in restaurants and bars. Your perspective changes when the question being asked by your waiter is whether you qualify…
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Small things
We moved the cattle today from one pasture to another. They’re not our cattle any more, although all but two of the cows originally belonged to us. We are renting our pasture land to the same rancher who bought our cattle last winter. The first load to arrive this spring included those animals: the cows…
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Still wanting
I decided to change the name of this blog. I’m not sure that a 60-year-old can legitimately call herself middle-aged. Wishfully, perhaps, but not legitimately. I turned 60 last week and still haven’t decided whether it’s a milestone or a millstone. My brother reminded me that 60 is just a number. It means nothing, he…
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Do I hear $5?
Earlier this summer, K and I attended a currency and collectibles auction sale for a business which had gone bankrupt. I could almost imagine myself stepping into a small cramped store, motes of dust floating in the light from the window. Glass cases full of silver coins and brass medallions, sliding drawers lined with money.…
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Furry rodents, striped mammals and things that go bang
REWIND (“Rural Routes”, 1983) Squirrels scrambled through the bushes north of our house, seemingly undaunted by the ice beneath their feet. There are lots of little red ones and a couple of the larger gray variety. Several years ago, in another house, the squirrels were a nuisance. They raced over the roof and we had…
Rural Routes, Blog Version 