Wendi Stewart – Wendi with an ‘eye’

My daughter recently shared on Facebook a post from Meryl Streep with a photo of herself circa 1974, I am guessing, on the way to an audition for King Kong where she was told she was “too ugly”–not just ugly, but too ugly for the role of Dwan. Meryl has […]

I recently stumbled upon a Ted Talk given by Robert Holden in 2018. Robert is a British psychologist who focuses his attention on “positive psychology and well-being.” Anyone who calls himself an expert on happiness is a friend of mine. I wasn’t familiar with Robert Holden or his psychology until […]

The temperature went down to 13 degrees last night. I flung open the windows and crawled beneath my heavy blanket pulled up to my chin and slept comfortably, the air coming in the window fragrant and fresh. When I got up this morning, the air was still chilly as Gracie […]

I was weeding this morning, pulling invaders while the sun was busy elsewhere. Thankfully, I no longer have a lawn to tend to, but I have a few areas of perennials, with hosta and brown-eyed Susans and the like. A small stone wall marks the perimeter of my property; in […]

A close friend has died. It took two years for cancer, a brain tumour specifically, to claim Wally, while we looked on with encouragement and positive thoughts, looked on with fear at times, wanting to beg of those or that which seems to be in charge of our inevitable departure, […]

I have just spent three days walking a few of the many Nova Scotia beaches. They are quite incredible, breathtaking, soul-soothing. I think a love of water is in the blood of most of us who grew up around and in Fort Frances and it would be easy to take […]

In 1940, Virginia Woolf wrote an essay entitled “The Humane Art.” In it she said, “A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.” She was reviewing a biography of Horace Walpole who had written sixteen volumes of letters that earned him the title of historian. […]

I might be cranky. Wait here while I check. I won’t be a minute. Pick up a magazine or pour yourself a coffee or cut the grass. Not my grass; I have retired from having a lawn. Okay, I’m back. I’ve run a few tests and the results were somewhat […]

Remember those perpetual motion gizmos, the little balls that swing back and forth, striking each other to keep the movement constant? Newton’s Cradle it was called, created in 1967 by an English actor and named in honour of Sir Isaac Newton, long-considered the most influential scientist of all time. Physics […]

I am trying to find order in my chaos having just moved. I think “order” fell off the truck somewhere between here and there. As I tried to find a spot for the “essential” things, I did more moving them from one side of the room to the other than […]

Fairy tales have been around since the early 17th century, say some “experts,” while other historians and anthropologists link “Beauty and The Beast” back four thousand years. Suffice to say, fairy tales have been around a very long time. Psychology Today reported in 2014 that fairy tales are told in […]

Father’s Day is coming. I am not sure many of us whose fathers have gone ahead think of the hero of our childhood with more devotion on Father’s Day than any other day. There simply isn’t a single day that goes by without my father in it, in memory now […]