A different sort of celebration

According to T.S. Eliot, April is the cruelest month, but that's not a sentiment I share. 

As someone who loves poetry, I'd have to counter by saying that April is the coolest month, as that's when we celebrate National Poetry Month in Canada. 

One of my plans for this month is to give away a book of poetry every day in April. For one thing, it's a good way to cull my (admittedly too large) collection of these books. After all, two bookcases full probably means more books of poems than I will be able to reread in the remainder of my life. 

I did something along similar lines back in 2011 when we travelled across the continent of North America. Considering that most of that trip was through the US, I'm sorry to say we won't be repeating that journey this year (and I guess not until 2028). Like so many other Canadians, in conscience we're just not able to cross the border for now. 

The League of Canadian Poets has selected Family as this year's theme, and that's a word that means different things to many of us: blended family, adoptive family, nuclear family, extended family. Or, to interpret it the way that makes the most sense to me: chosen family, those people we hold dear as friends, a new kind of family, chosen at that. 

The books at the top of this page each offer a very different take on contemporary poetry. For more suggestions click here to see a list compiled by the brainy folks at The Tyee. 

Springtime in Canada

...or at least here on the Lower Mainland of the West Coast. 

While I admit that the tulips are store-bought (though raised on Vancouver Island), the forsythia brancches are ones I brought in from outside. 

Today marks the Vernal Equinox, when things are in a kind of balance, as the sun is above the equator, making the hours of daylight and darkness equal--the day we refer to as the first official day of spring. 

After this winter, spring is more than welcome. Snow. Cold. Disruptive news. Balance sounds like something that's very badly needed. 

Up and down, round and round

Trying to stay 'up' on what's happening in the news has become crazy enough to just about give me a kink in my neck. 

At least I've finally found a term to help me make some sense of it: yo-yo diplomacy. 

Reactions from this side of the border have been nearly as up-and-down as the pronouncements coming out of the mouth of the person who's currently occupying (and I use that word intentionally) the White House. Ontario's premier has waffled on threats as extreme as cutting off power to three northern US states. Our premier here in BC has put forward a proposal that would give a kind of 'War Measures' powers to his government. 

I suppose the action of a yo-yo is ruled by the laws of physics. If only there were some kind of law that might help control the current up-and-down chaos. 

Rights. Equality. Empowerment.

It was nearly a hundred years ago that my grandmother got a job as an assistant to the sheriff in the city where she lived. No doubt--besides her brain--the tool she relied on the most was a typewriter, not unlike the one above which remains in a place of honour in my office. 

Not a lot of women worked outside the home back then, but she was a single parent--and heck, with four kids to feed, she needed an income. 

Oddly, for that era when women mostly stayed at home, my other gramma had a paying job as well. She worked in a bakery which, lucky for me, meant I was privileged to get fancily decorated cakes for birthdays and other special occasions. She also had four kids, along with a husband who was unable to work. 

On this day, International Women's Day, when we celebrate women and our many accomplishments, it seemed important for me to remember these two brave women from my family who preceded me, with a legacy I am proud to claim. As for those words in the subject header, they constitute the theme of this year's IWD, and I can only hope that soon they will actually be true for all of us who identify as women. 

What year is this?

As we come to the end of Black History Month, I'm left scratching my head over a 'decoration' I spotted in a nearby neighbourhood. It looked like an odd way to celebrate Christmas, but worse, I couldn't help but wonder who lived in that house. 

No, I didn't stop and knock on their door. In truth, I'm not sure I would have wanted to get to know them. 

Nonetheless, it made me question whether anything at all in our world has actually changed. 

Time to exercise your Freedom to Read

It's been slow seeping out, but news keeps circulating that libraries--especially those in schools--are getting rid of books. 

The reason for many of these culls has been absurd-sounding blanket rules that anything published before 2008 must go. 

Some of the glib reasons offered for these moves are that books before then weren't culturally sensitive enough to qualify in today's woke world. The overall excuse has been called an "equity-based weeding process" but under that banner books such as Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl have been tossed. Isn't it worth knowing what it must have been like to be a young Jew in hiding from Nazis?

I can't help but also think of Joy Kogawa's Obasan, the first book that really shone a light on facts of the internment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II.

How many other important books have been tossed in the name of this absurdity?

This week is the 40th anniversary of Canada's annual observance of Freedom to Read Week. Maybe it's a good time--quick, while you can--find a book that's been banned (or 'challenged' if you feel like using the current newspeak), and try to figure out what's so darn scary about it. 

So what really happened?

It was a year ago today that the world learned of the death of Alexei Navalny. He'd been jailed in Siberia for trumped-up charges that he and his law team continued to challenge. 

The jail, above the Arctic Circle, was part of the old 'gulag' system from days when the USSR still existed. Not surprisingly, conditions there sounded miserable. 

Although officials claimed that Navalny died of a blood clot, this has been questioned. 

I suppose because I remain somewhat of a paranoid type, I have my own belief of what the circumstance was. Maybe you do too.