Wendi Stewart – Wendi with an ‘eye’

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 […]

If you follow the news with any regularity, it’s safe to say the upcoming U.S. election is fraught with fear and angst while hope has all but left the building—and that is an understatement of the colossal kind. The rhetoric makes my teeth hurt while I watch (if I watch) […]

Are you familiar with lupines? They are of a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, just in case you wanted to know. Actually, they are of a genus of flowering plants in the legume family even if you didn’t want to know. Lupines grow freely in the abandoned […]

My friend has died; he is away as my grandmother said of death. Mike and I went to high school together, knew each other almost immediately, and for five years we had many of our classes together and we were friends. When I heard of Mike’s passing I felt an […]