Wendi Stewart – Wendi with an ‘eye’

I had a friend visit me for a couple of weeks recently. She is the kind of friend who fits right in; who doesn’t alter a space in which she is in but rather enhances it. The best part is she has a serious helping of silly ingrained in her […]

Thanksgiving has passed. I ate enough turkey and stuffing and fixings to sink the ship a few times. The pumpkin pie was exceptional, if I’m allowed to say so; the pumpkin grown in my own garden, which somehow makes it more noteworthy, almost noble. If Rod Stewart is knight-worthy so […]

Kurt Vonnegut said, “Go into the arts. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.” That seems an almost defeatist way of looking at life but it’s true. Creativity is known to soothe the soul; to be in the tool box for rehabilitation. Yet the first programs […]

Many of you will have seen the video of six-year-old Alex from New York on Facebook reading a letter he wrote to U.S. President Barack Obama about the boy in Syria. He asked President Obama to bring Omran Daqnees to Scarsdale so Alex can give Omran a home. In his […]

I watch people. I think I’ve always watched people. I look for clues in how they hold their hands, or repeatedly pull on a ball cap as if they are trying to keep their thoughts contained or massage an eyebrow to control a worry. I look for sad, for weary, […]

I’d like to discuss this aging thing with you, if you don’t mind. For those of you not engaged in the process of deterioration, I suggest you quit reading right this minute and wander off to find something else to do. For the rest of you, I pose this question: […]

If I had my life to live over, I might pursue a variety of occupations that I didn’t have time for this particular go-round. I still would want to be a writer, but I’d start earlier and wouldn’t engage in the distractions of accounting with such vigour, though I do […]

I have a lot of favourite words. I even have them in a list in case I forget; a list I can add to and delete from. Sometimes I modify said list—removing words that no longer make me smile while adding new words. Words I stumble upon in the course […]

You know those ideas that seem like really good ones at first blush, when excitement is high and enthusiasm keen! But halfway across swimming Lake Ontario, you start to doubt your common sense and think you may have made the wrong decision—considering you only know how to dog paddle and […]

I haven’t watched much of the 2016 Summer Olympics on television even though I thoroughly enjoy sport; admire the dedication and commitment these athletes demonstrate to get to play on the world stage. If I had to pick a favourite sport, that would be a tough decision, but the 100-metre […]

“War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.” So said Thomas Mann, a German writer who, in 1929, won a Nobel Prize in Literature for his thoughts; those thoughts he recorded on paper. I am just such a coward, it would seem. And when the war I […]

I suppose I could be classified as odd, a quality I’m quite fond of though I’m not sure everyone has such an aspiration. Thankfully, for me, being odd comes rather naturally, doesn’t require much effort at all on my part. Plus, I think my oddness tops the list of attributes […]